Mann v. Rock Island Bank/Opinion of the Court

As no counsel appeared in this court for the Rock Island Bank, we have been compelled to make a minute and careful analysis of the whole record. It turns in every point upon simple questions of fact. There is not a doubtful question of law involved in the entire record. That this court should be compelled to undergo the labor of finding the truth in such a mass of testimony, a duty much more appropriate to a master, or to some other tribunal than this, and which in common-law cases is peculiarly the province of the jury, is itself a hindrance and obstruction to public justice by the delay which it interposes to the hearing of other cases. We do not feel that this burden should be further increased, and the time of this court, due to other parties and to more important interests, be consumed in writing and delivering opinions which, if they attempt to go into examination of the facts to justify the decision of the court, will be equally tedious and useless.

[The learned justice, without going, in the opinion delivered, into analysis or argument, then stated in a general form, and by way of result, the history of Mann's transactions while cashier and agent of the bank, as the court considered that the same appeared on the evidence; adding that it seemed pretty clear to this court that a certain $20,000 of which Mann had defrauded the bank did become real estate, which was now held in the name of his wife, and announcing in conclusion that as the decree of the court below was founded upon that same view of the case, it was affirmed.]

DECREE ACCORDINGLY.