1. The refusal of the court to allow the plaintiff to read the answer of the witness Nash to the question, 'You may state whether or not that check has all the appearance of having passed through the bank in the ordinary course of business,' cannot be assigned as error. The bill of exceptions does not show what answer was made to that question in the deposition of the witness. It does not even state the facts the answer tended to establish. We cannot, therefore, say that the exclusion of the answer was prejudicial to the plaintiff. For aught that appears in the record, the witness may have made an answer that was injurious to the plaintiff, or one that was of no value to either party.
In Packet Co. v. Clough, 20 Wall. 528, 542, one of the assignments of error was the rejection of a deposition. In respect to that assignment, the court said: 'It is sufficient to say that we have not before us either the deposition or any statement of what it tended to prove. We cannot know, therefore, that it was of any importance, or that, if it had been admitted, it could have had any influence upon the verdict. A party who complains of the rejection of evidence must show that he was injured by the rejection. His bill of exceptions must make it appear that, if it had been admitted, it might have led the jury to a different verdict. This must be understood as the practice in this court, and such is the requirement of our twenty-first rule. By that rule it is ordered that, when the error assigned is to the admission or rejection of evidence, the specification shall quote the full substance of the evidence offered, or copy the offer as stated in the bill of exceptions. This is to enable the court to see whether the evidence offered was material, for it would be idle to reverse a judgment for the admission or rejection of evidence that could have had no effect upon the verdict.' At the date of the trial of that cause in the court of original jurisdiction it was provided, by rule 21 of this court, that, 'when the error alleged is to the admission or rejection of evidence, the specification shall quote the full substance of the evidence offered or copy the offer as stated in the bill of exceptions. Any alleged error not in accordance with these rules will be disregarded.' 11 Wall. ix. Subsequently, the rule was modified so as to substitute, for the words above quoted, the following: 'When the error alleged is to the admission or rejection of evidence, the specification shall quote the full substance of the evidence admitted or rejected.' 14 Wall. xii. This change of phraseology did not affect the substance of the rule.
The principle announced in Packet Co. v. Clough was reaffirmed in Railroad Co. v. Smith, 21 Wall. 261, and Thompson v. Bank, 111 U.S. 529, 535, 536, 4 Sup. Ct. 689. The rule is not the less applicable in the present case because the trial court excluded the answer to the question upon the particular ground stated in the bill of exceptions. It may therefore be regarded as settled that an assignment of error based upon the exclusion by the trial court of an answer given in the deposition of a witness to a particular question will be disregarded by this court if the answer, or the full substance of it, is not set forth in the record in appropriate form for examination.
Nor did the court err in excluding those parts of Nash's deposition showing 'what the marks and indorsements on the back of each of the checks indicated, how such marks were made, and by whom.' The checks themselves were in evidence; and if, as the bill of exceptions states, the witness did not appear to be familiar with the course of business of the banks through which the checks passed, so as to entitle him to speak upon the subject, the exclusion of his answers relating to the subject referred to was not error.
2. The court did not err in allowing the defendant to read in evidence the confidential business statement made by Louis S. Shauer to Bradstreet's Commercial Agency, at Sioux City, in January, 1885. That statement, the bill of exception recites, concealed the alleged liability of Louis to his brother, then existing. Why should such concealment have been made? The answer to that question has some, though perhaps very slight, bearing upon the inquiry whether Louis was, in fact, indebted to his brother to the full extent claimed by the latter.