Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

116 Mass. 362

Knight v. Peacock

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided December 4, 1874

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1874-12-04

Contract for commissions on the sale of certain property by the plaintiffs, as real estate brokers, for the defendant.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-12-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 1925

6 state decisions

30187418801890190019101920decided

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 →

Ames, J.

¶1It may be gathered from the report of the case, that the plaintiffs had sold certain real estate belonging to the defendant, which had been paid for, in whole or in part, by taking certain other real estate in exchange. In answer to their claim for commissions upon this transaction, the defendant insists that the exchange in question was but a part of the service which they had undertaken to render. He contends, and offered evidence tending to show, that another and important part of their contract was to secure to him a loan to the amount of $1,500 upon he property which should come to his hands by that exchange. He insists also that this proposed loan was the real and effect*363ive inducement that influenced him to make the exchange. No objection was taken at the trial that this course of defence was not open to him under his answer; and for that reason it is not to be considered as a question of pleading. The only question raised by this bill of exceptions is in regard to the propriety of the inquiry as to the considerations or causes that induced the defendant to sign the papers and complete the trade. As the course of the trial raised the question whether any false or fraudulent representations had been brought to bear upon him, we see no objection to the inquiry in its general and comprehensive form. If he had been induced to sign the papers by a false and fraudulent assurance that the proposed loan had been obtained, a question what induced him to sign them was well calculated to bring out the fact, and was in form unobjectionable.

¶2Exceptions overruled.

/116/mass/362 · .json · Public domain