EVIDENCE BY SURVIVING PARTICIPANT OF A CONTRACT OR OTHER TRANSACTION

Authors

Abstract

Among the most prolific and endless sources of litigation of recent times are the so-called "dead man statutes", which forbid the surviving participant in a contract or other transaction to testify regarding it unless the opposing party waives the restriction. These statutes lay down a rule of thumb which treats all cases, meritorious or unmeritorious, exactly the same. In attempting to apply them to the cases the courts have made one fine distinction after another, only to interject still finer ones in between, until the whole· makes a labyrinth in which suitor and court have often found themselves hopelessly lost. The result is a mass of cases difficult and often impossible to reconcile. 6 IA. L. BULL. 61; 9 CAL. L. REV. 347; 20 COL. L. REV. 229; 6 A. L. R. 756, note. The ease with which a statute may be interpreted, as indicated by the number of cases required for this purpose, is one of the most important tests of its desirability. Even the most cursory glance through the reports reveals hundreds of such cases and shows how miserably these statutes fail to meet this test. The inquiry therefore becomes pertinent as to what policy the courts should follow in interpreting these statutes, and as to the desirability of retaining them on our statute books.

Recommended Citation

EVIDENCE BY SURVIVING PARTICIPANT OF A CONTRACT OR OTHER TRANSACTION, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 290 (1926).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol24/iss3/9