Pennsylvania State Reports Containing Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Volume 132) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890. Excerpt: ... Opinion of Court below. Supreme Court in affirming the lower court in that case. It very often, I have no doubt, becomes absolutely necessary for the Supreme Court to take a broad and liberal view of the language used by the court below, knowing as they do from their own experience when acting as nisi prius judges, that the lower court has not the same time or opportunities to weigh the words used in an impromptu charge. But few charges would stand a close criticism or a strict application of legal rules. If the law, as announced in the case cited, is to have the broad interpretation contended for, what becomes of the preliminary question asked of every witness, to test his competency to give the value of the land taken, before and after the location of the road? If a' jury of carpenters, shoemakers and tailors, simply because they have been permitted by the court to look at the ground that they might thereby be better able to understand the witnesses, are, by that unfortunate act of the court, to become general witnesses, and from their own judgment, formed alone from their view, to fix the value of a tract of land at a time when they had not seen it, it must be worse than folly to subject every other witness to a strict examination as to his knowledge of values and experience in the market rates of real estate. What the court meant in Hartman v. Railroad Co. was, that in all questions touching the locus in quo and upon which all witnesses who had simply seen the land could testify from what they had seen, the jury might act from their own view. This is undoubtedly the law. To perfectly comprehend the question it must be divided. First, upon questions concerning only the visible situation of the land, the viewers may act upon what they have seen. Second, ..