Priest v. Wheeler

Decided March 15, 1869

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1869-03-15

Contract for breach of the following written agreement, dated January 23, 1866, and signed by the defendant: “ I hereby agree to purchase… Held: should be placed in the hands of Elijah Hanson for the use of the defendant, and to be delivered to him by said Hanson upon the payment, on or before said Hay 1, to the plaintiff, or to said Hanson for the use of the plaintiff, of the said balance due under the written agreement, and that the defendant should, on or before said Hay…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1869-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently May 1983

7 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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Wells, J.

¶1No exception lies to the refusal of the court to order a nonsuit to be entered. Wentworth v. Leonard, 4 Cush. 414.

¶2The evidence that “ the defendant told the plaintiff he might take the certificate of stock from the hands of Manson,” and that he did so, and sold the stock for “ its full market value at that time,” would not warrant the court in directing a verdict for the defendant, on the ground that it amounted in law to a rescission or abandonment of the contract. If so intended, it might so operate; but whether it was so intended was a question of fact for the jury.

¶3The Resolve of 1865, c. 76, did not change the law relating to usury any further than to exempt the contracts, therein authorized, from the penalties imposed by the General Statutes. The instructions of the court below upon this point were right.

¶4Exceptions overruled.