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104 U.S. 465

Lamar v. Micou

Supreme Court of the United States

Decided October 1, 1881

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1881-10

<p>A defendant, who made no defence except to reduce the amount of the recovery, cannot appeal from a decree against him for less than $5,000.</p>

2 counsel of record

Relies on Thompson v. Butler · George Sampson v. Samuel Welsh

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Petition denied / appeal dismissed · 7–0 · Decided 1881-10

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1950

3 federal appellate · 1 state decisions

5018811890190019101920193019401950decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1A defendant, who made no defence except to reduce the amount of the recovery, cannot appeal from a decree against him for less than $5,000.

¶2Motion to dismiss an appeal from the Circuit Court of th® United States for the Southern District of New York.

¶3Mr. S', jP. Mash in support of the motion.

¶4Mr. Edward N. Dickerson and Mr. Charles J. Beaman, Jr., contra.

¶5Mr. Chief Justice Waite

¶6delivered the opinion of the court.

¶7This is an appeal by the defendant below from a decree against him for less than $5,000. There is no claim of set-off or counter-claim, except to reduce the amount of the recovery. In no event can he get any money decree in his favor. All he seeks to do is to defeat the claim of the appellee. Consequently the amount in controversy, so far as this appeal is concerned, is fixed by the decree. Thompson v. Butler, 95 U. S. 694; Sampson v. Welsh, 24 How. 207. In effect he insists that, under the rule of liability established against him in. the court below, the decree should have been for more than $5,000, and that for this reason he is entitled to an appeal, so that he may.show he is not liable at all. This, we think it clear, is -not the law.

¶8' The case is not changed by the fact that if, under an appeal which is pending in another suit, it shall be found the appellant was credited in this suit with an amount which properly belonged to- that, the decree in that suit will be reduced, while the one in this cannot be correspondingly increased. The appellee is satisfied with this decree, and has not appealed. . The appellant cannot complain if it turns out in the end that, but *466for a mistake which was made in his favor, the appellee might have recovered a larger amount.

¶9Appeal dismissed.

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