Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/903

 SPANGIjER V. SELLER8, 891 �the judgment against Luoinda Drais was founded was rad- ically defective, and wholiy insufi&eient to support the judg- ment. An appeal from the judgment itself would have brought up the pleadings as a part of the judgment roU, and must have terminated in a virtual defeat of the action. An inspection of the record in that case, in view of the uniform decisions of this court, from the case of Rowe v. Kohle, 4 Cal. 285, to the present time, as to the capacity, or rather want of capacity, of a married -woman to hind herself by such a contract as was alleged in that case is decisive upon this point. In this view it was inexcusable in the defendant to have permitted the time limited by statute for such an ap- peal from the judgment itself to pass away, and so allow the right of the defendant in that action to become lost in the abortive attempt to obtain a new trial, when such new trial, if it had been obtained, was not necessary for her protection under the circumstances of the case." So that it clearly appears, both as matter of fact and of law, that upon the new trial no judgment could have been rendered against the plaintiff ; and that, upon appeal from the judgment rendered, it would have been reversed, and judgment rendered in her favor. The damage resulting to the plaintifiP in being com- pelled to pay the judgment against her was the direct resuit of the attorney's negligence in either case. �In Skillen v. Wallace, 36 Ind. 319, the plaintiff claimed to be the owner of a valuable piece of ground in the city of Indian- apolis, and brought suit to recover the possession thereof . The jury in that suit brought in a verdict for the plaintiff for the whole ground, which was of great value; that when the ver- dict was brought in by the jury the attorney took and al- tered it so as to cover a small and totally valueless piece of the ground, and asked the jury to find the verdict thus al- tered, which they did, and which the plaintiff in this case avers damaged him to the amount of $1,000. A demurrer was filed to the petition, and sustained by the court below, but was reversed on error by the supreme court. The dam- age in this case was the direct resuit of the act of the attor- ����