84 court of appeals of maryland

of the objection. The trial would pause while
counsel prepared this, and made it acceptable to
the court; and often the court would then write
in it a ruling of a few lines, with reasons. A sin-
gle example, of a ruling in the General Court in
1782, will suffice;³²

And the Court (Harrison, Ch. J. and Kanson, J.) accord-
ingly determined that the said deed, on account of the defect in
the said acknowledgment, was void; and therefore ruled that
the same should not be read in evidence. To which opinion of
the court, the plaintiff excepted.

More elaborate rulings will be found in
Helms v. Howard,³³ and Harper v. Hampton.³⁴
In the Court of Chancery longer explanations
were usual. When the reasons for the rulings at
law were thus stated, the reason for the concur-
rence or dissent of the Court of Appeals would be
sufficiently clear without any additional statement
by that court; in many instances the terse comment
that the Court of Appeals affirmed or reversed on
this or that exception meant clearly enough that
it took the view stated or the opposite view. But,
as has been said, the Court of Appeals judges did
file written opinions in a few cases during the
twenty-five years after 1781. The first written in
the modern manner appears to have been one filed
in 1789 in Ward v. Reeder, 2 Harris & McHenry,
145, 154. Such opinions were exceptional, but
there were a few,³⁵ some of them not reported.
Harris and McHenry, like other private re-
porters, reported only a selection of cases.

32. Planagan v. Young, 2 Harris & McHenry, 39.

33. 2 Harris & McHenry, 57.

34. 1 Harris & Johnson, 622.

35. 3 Harris & McHenry, 235, 331. 4 Harris & McHenry, 322.
1 Harris & Johnson, 201, 397.