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102 Ala. 400

Boggan v. Bennett

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1893

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1893-11-15

Tried before the Hon. James J. Banks-. This was an action of trespass brought by the appellee, Nicholas Bennett, against the appellant, M. M. Boggan, to recover damages for the alleged wrongful and forcible entry of. the dwelling house of the plaintiff, by defendant, and carrying away therefrom certain articles of wearing apparel, household furniture, &c., and for using rough and abusive language in the presence of his family. The complaint claimed $1,000 damages.

Relies on Ala. Great Southern Railroad v. Tapia · Ross v. Malone & Son

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1893-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently November 1916

1 federal appellate · 6 state decisions

30189319001910decided

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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STONE, C. J.

¶1The circuit court erred in receiving testimony of the value of attorney’s fees paid or incurred in asserting Bennett’s exemptions, and in allowing proof to be made of the expense of hauling the goods back home. These were in their nature special damages, and to authorize proof to be made of them, they should have been specially claimed in the complaint. — Ala. Gr. So. R. R. Co. v. Tapia, 94 Ala. 226; 10 So. Rep. 236; Ross v. Malone, 97 Ala. 529, 12 So. Rep. 182.

¶2■ We cannot apply the doctrine of error without injury to this case, for the following, if for no other reason : Although there was testimony tending to show the goods were damaged to a greater amount than the plaintiff recovered, there was testimony, also, tending to show the •damage was very slight. We can not know by what testimony the finding of the facts was controlled.

¶3We hold, too, that if the papers in the attachment suit had been offered, they should have been received, together with testimony that the seizure was made under them. They were offered simply in mitigation of the trespass, and not in justification of the seizure. Offered for this •purpose, it was neither necessary nor proper that a plea should have been interposed. Oral proof of them, without their production, was inadmissible.

¶4Reversed and remanded.

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