Robert Cooper Grier

“ If a defendant plead several pleas in bar, either of which is a defence to the whole action, and one be found in his favor, he is entitled to judgment. For this reason the parties may have considered it unnecessary to pray the judgment of the court on the plea demurred to, as the issues on the other pleas had been found in favor of the defendant, and judgment rendered thereon for him. And the plaintiff here, who was also plaintiff below, cannot assign error on an issue in which there was no judgment of the court below. ”

“ Toler, from 11 Wheaton, which, as it is understood by me, cannot be tortured into an authority for the plaintiff. On the contrary, it decides, that, where a contract grows out of an illegal act, a court of justice will not lend its aid to enforce it. The selling of a slave, without a previous compliance with the requisitions of the law, which could alone make such sale legal, was an illegal act; and this, therefore, is an authority for the defendant. ”

“ Indeed, I had supposed, if there was a universal and uncontroverted proposition in the common law, as it is known and understood in England and in this country, it was, that no act done in violation of the laws of the land, or in disregard or contravention of its principles, can be the foundation of a claim which can be enforced at law or in equity. ”

“ The act of 1789, which authorizes the taking of the deposition of a witness de bene esse, nowhere requires that the notice should show that the case was within the provisions of the act. The decisions cited by the counsel for the plaintiff only establish what has never been controverted, that the party who offers a deposition taken de bene esse must show that the case provided for by the act existed, and that there has been a full compliance with its requisitions. ”

“ After the defendant had read to the jury the deposition of Benjamin G. Sims, which was done subject to exceptions, the plaintiff moved the court to exclude from the jury that part of said deposition which proved or tended to prove said plaintiff to be a negro-trader; but the court overruled said motion, on the ground that the counsel of the plaintiff had agreed in writing on said deposition, that the same might be read in evidence. ”

“ RIVES & SHELTON, his Attorneys at Law:--
'Take notice, that on Wednesday next, the third day of May, A. D. 1843, at the clerk's office of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Mississippi, between the hours of eight o'clock, A. M., and three o'clock, P. M., at the town of Jackson, I shall take the deposition of William S. Rayner, (about to depart the State,) to be read on the part of the defendant de bene esse in a certain action at law, depending in said court, wherein said Harris is plaintiff, and Winter and Wall defendants; where you can attend. ”