Dunbar v. Johnson

Decided November 15, 1871

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1871-11-15

Contract to recover a balance due upon an account stated on June 1, 1868. The answer set up that the account consisted of items for intoxicating liquors sold here by the plaintiff :o the defendants in violation of law.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 1940

1 federal appellate · 3 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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Gray, J.

¶1Although the accounting together is a sufficient consideration to support a count upon an account stated, the defendant is not precluded from pleading and proving that the whole claim was founded in an illegal transaction. Thomas v. Hawkes, 8 M. & W. 140. Cocking v. Ward, 1 C. B. 858, 870. Kennedy v. Brown, 13 C. B. (N. S.) 677. Rundlett v. Weeber, 3 Gray, 263. In the present case, it is found as a fact that the account stated was founded upon sales of intoxicating liquors made in this Commonwealth in violation of law, and it does not appear that the account included any lawful items. It was therefore rightly ruled that the plaintiff could not recover.

¶2Judgment for the defendants.