Massachusetts Reports: Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Volume 17

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Page 106 - no action shall be brought whereby to charge any executor or administrator upon any special promise to answer damages out of his own estate ; or whereby to charge the defendant upon any special promise to answer for the debt, default, or miscarriage of another person...
Page 107 - That no contract for the sale of any goods, wares, and merchandises, for the price of ten pounds sterling or upwards shall be allowed to be good, except the buyer shall accept part of the goods so sold, and actually receive the same, or give something in earnest to bind the bargain, or in part...
Page 212 - No court will lend its aid to a man who founds his cause of action upon an immoral or an illegal act.
Page 428 - No subject shall be held to answer for any crime or offence, until the same is fully and plainly, substantially and formally, described to him; or be compelled to accuse, or furnish evidence against himself.
Page 343 - It will be liable to debts ; it will go to executors ; it will pass by a will not made and executed with the solemnities required by the statute of frauds. The assignment of the debt, or forgiving it, will draw the land after it, as a consequence ; nay, it would do it, though the debt were forgiven only by parol, for the right to the land would follow, notwithstanding the statute of frauds.
Page 226 - Justice, in delivering the opinion of the court, remarked " that no principle of law is better settled than that no action will lie upon a contract made in violation of a statute, or of a principle of the common law.
Page 12 - We may lay it down as a broad general principle, that, wherever one of two innocent persons must suffer by the acts of a third, he who has enabled such third person to occasion the loss must sustain it.
Page 412 - Blackstone, that if a servant, by his negligence, does any damage to a stranger, the master shall be answerable for his neglect. But the damage must be done while he is actually employed in the master's service ; otherwise, the servant shall answer for his own misbehavior.
Page 36 - The true rule is, that the party receiving such notes must examine them as soon as he has opportunity, and return them immediately. If he does not, he is negligent, and negligence will defeat his right of action. This principle will apply in all cases where forged notes have been received, but certainly with more strength when the party receiving them is the one purporting to be bound to pay. For he knows better than any other whether they are his notes or not; and if he pays them or receives them...
Page 134 - Bing. 284:, 300, declined to follow the rule there laid down, and held that the credit of a witness who has testified orally or by giving his deposition may be impeached by showing that he has made a different statement out of court, either before or after he has given his testimony, and that it is not necessary that the impeached witness be first inquired of as to such different statement, or that he be present when his credit is to be impeached. "We shall take occasion hereafter to advert to an...

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