Hall v. Hall

Decided October 15, 1804

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1804-10-15

<p>An administrator, to support his charges in an administration account for payment of taxes, must produce the receipt of the collector. Quaere if he must not also pro’ e the assessment of the taxes.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1804-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently January 1936

9 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1The whole Court (Strong, Sedgwick, Sewall, and Thacher, justices) were clearly of opinion that the evidence offered was not the best evidence which the nature of the case admitted ; that the receipts of the collector were better evidence than the evidence offered ; (a) which might be obtained, and should therefore be produced. Strong and Sedgwick, justices, said that they were strongly inclined to think that the assessment of the taxes ought also to be proved, that it might appear to the Court that they were a legal claim on the administrator. The other two justices seemed to think it would be sufficient to produce the receipts of the collector without proving the assessment.

¶2 [The receipts of the collector were not alone evidence of the amount paid. This could only be proved by the collector or another witness. — Ed.]