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11 Mo. 217

Darby v. Swartz

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided October 15, 1847

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1847-10-15

Louis Circuit Court. I.The plaintiff in the court below and in error insists, that the instruction given by the Circuit Court to the jury was error, in this, that it removed from the consideration of the jury the facts of the cause, and was a positive direction to them (the jurors) to find a verdict for the defendant, thereby discharging them from their peculiar province, viz., the finding of a verdict which they were sworn to render, and compelled the plaintiff to elect a…

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Decided 1847-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1917

5 state decisions

2018471850186018701880189019001910decided

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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Napton, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court.

¶2This was an action of detinue, brought by Darby, the administrator of Samuel A. Childs, against Swartz, to recover a negro girl, alleged to belong to the estate of said Childs.

¶3The plaintiff, on the trial, offered evidence showing that the girl, together with several others, originally belonged to Samuel A. and B. Childs, who were partners and insolvent; that an execution upon a judgment against Samuel A. Childs, for an individual debt of said Samuel A., had been levied on said girl, and that she was sold under said execution to the defendant, Swartz ; that a suit in chancery had been commenced against the partnership, in the progress of which, this slave and others had been attached — and that the partnership effects were entirely insufficient to pay the partnership debts.

¶4The court, at defendant’s request, instructed the jury that this evidence did not support the plaintiff’s declaration; and thereupon, the plaintiff took a nonsuit, which he afterwards moved to set aside. This motion being overruled, the cause was brought here by writ of error.

¶5*219Whatever title Samuel A. Childs had to this slave, was purchased by the defendant at the sheriff’s sale, and of course his administrator could have no right to recover. If the creditors of S. A. and B. Childs have a lien on the slave, or a right to appropriate her value to their use, I do not see that the intervention of an administrator upon S. A. Childs5' estate will be essential to the establishment or enforcement of their rights. She would be as accessible to the process of the law in the hands of Swartz, as in the possession of S. A. Childs’ administrator. The latter would have nothing to do with property which belonged to the partnership of S. A. & B. Childs, unless it had been in the possession of S. A. Childs at his death.

The other Judges concurring,

¶6judgment affirmed.

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