Linderman v. Berg

Decided September 15, 1849

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1849-09-15

In error from the Common Pleas of Fayette. This was an ejectment commenced in 1846. In 1848, Stewart presented a petition setting forth that he had sold the land to defendant with a covenant warranty, and praying to be substituted as defendant. He further stated that he had not until recently been aware that the case was on the trial list, and that his duties as a member of Congress would prevent his attendance and preparation for the trial at the approaching term.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““(T)he petitioner was not a landlord. He was simply a vendor. . . .””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Hollenback v. Polish American Citizens

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1849-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently April 1956

1 federal appellate · 2 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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Per Curiam.

¶1the petitioner had actually been the defendant’s landlord, it would have been doubtful, under the circumstances, whether he would have been entitled to become a party. In McClay v. Benedict, 1 Rawle, 424, it was said that admission to defend is an act of the Court; and when the purpose of it is delay, as it palpably was here, it might perhaps be thought that the party had dispensed with his right by delay till the exercise of it would be an abuse of it. But the petitioner was not a landlord. He was simply a vendor; and not having a reversionary interest, as in McClay v. Benedict, and Boyer v. Smith, 5 Watts, 65, he was not within either the words or the intent of the statute.

¶2Judgment affirmed.