PANCOAST v. ELDRIDGE

PANCOAST v. ELDRIDGE
1927 OK 333
259 P. 863
127 Okla. 146
Case Number: 18113
Decided: 10/04/1927
Supreme Court of Oklahoma

PANCOAST, Adm'r, et al.
v.
ELDRIDGE.

Syllabus

¶0 Appeal and Error--Briefs Containing Language Contemptuous Toward Trial Court and Opposing Attorneys Stricken from Files.
A brief in no case can be used as a vehicle for the conveyance of hatred, contempt, insult, disrespect or professional discourtesy of any nature for the court of review, the trial judge, or the opposing counsel. The language used by the plaintiff in error in his reply brief toward the judgment of the trial court and the trial judge and the language used by the defendant in error in the response to the reply brief toward opposing counsel are each offensive, impertinent, insulting, unwarranted and unjustified, and come within the rule set forth herein, and as briefs this court cannot recognize them. It is our duty to protect the files of this court from becoming the permanent receptacle of such documents.

Error from District Court, Noble County; Claude Duval, Judge.

Action between A. Pancoast, administrator of the estate of George W. Brown, deceased, and Ben G. Eldridge; State or Oklahoma intervener. From the judgment, the administrator and intervener appeal. Reply of plaintiff in error and response thereto by defendant in error stricken from the files.

H. A. Johnson, for plaintiff in error.
Cress & Tebbe, for defendant in error.

PER CURIAM.

¶1 Plaintiff in error has filed herein a brief in reply to the answer brief of the defendant in error. Following the filing of this brief, the defendant in error has filed a brief in response to the reply brief of the plaintiff in error, in which last-mentioned brief counsel for defendant in error makes a derogatory comparison of counsel for plaintiff in error with a witness in the case whose credibility has been attacked by counsel for plaintiff in error, amounting to an insult. Plaintiff in error has filed his motion to strike the brief of defendant in error for the reason same is in violation of the rules and former decisions of this court. With this we agree. The attorneys of record for the defendant in error, after having made the unwarranted attack in their brief, have cited numerous cases wherein this court has held that:

"A brief in no case can be used as a vehicle for the conveyance of hatred, contempt, insult, disrespect or professional discourtesy of any nature for the court of review, the trial judge, or opposing counsel." Hoover v. State, 73 Okla. 112, 175 P. 117.