Knowles v. Inches

Baldwin, J., delivered the opinion of the Court—Terry, C. J., concurring.

We must reprehend the practice, which is too common, of stuffing a transcript with irrelevant and unnecessary matter. The present case affords a remarkable illustration. The transcript contains some two hundred and thirty-three pages, when everything essential to a review of the case might easily have been given in fifty. Besides the delays, unnecessary expense and labor thus created, the points are hid [214]in this mass of superfluous matter, and it frequently becomes more difficult to find out what they are, than to decide them when found. The Practice Act, so far from sanctioning any such course of proceeding, by implication, rebukes it. Instead of copying into a statement for a new trial or on an appeal^ deeds and transcripts of records, when no point is made on the construction of the language, a brief statement of the instrument answers every purpose. There is no sense in copying a judgment, execution, and the like, in cases where no question arises as to the form, or the particular words of them; but a short description of the paper, giving the sums, date, Court, etc., is sufficient. If proper attention were given to the making up of statements, we are convinced that the transcripts in this Court might, on an average, he reduced to less than one-half the present size. We might exercise our discretionary power in the imposition of costs in this case, probably with some effect, but for the difficulty of ascertaining by whose fault the insertion of this unnecessary matter is caused. In this case the appellants’ counsel^ in his brief, apologizes for the length of the transcript, and refers the cause of it to the other side’s insisting on the insertion of all this useless stuff. On this suggestion, of course, we cannot act.

This case is a bill in equity to restrain the defendants from prosecuting certain suits, depending in the Courts of San Francisco, and from leasing and conveying certain real estate herein situate. The ground upon which the bill proceeds is, that there has been a long course of vexatious litigation, and that the right has been determined in favor of the appellants; that sundry actions are still prosecuted and threatened, to harass and vex the appellants.

The case was referred to a referee, who, in his report, gives the history of the litigation, which, for variety and extent, is unexampled, considering the small value involved. This history, indeed, might afford an. illustrative appendix to Scott’s account of the celebrated suit of Peter Peebles v. Plainstaines, or Dickens’ report of the case of" Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Indeed, it would appear that the only use to which the parties designed to put this lot was to make it a foundation of a lawsuit, which they have erected upon it; an edifice divided, from cellar to garret, into all manner of secret chambers, involved passages and dark entries. The real parties to the controversy seem to have