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120 Mass. 53

Pearson v. Mason

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1876-03-04

Contract. The first and third counts of the declaration alleged that the plaintiff sold to the defendant a certain piece of' land on Joy Street in Somerville, and ten shares of the capital stock of the American Steam Safe Co., and received in payment therefor from the defendant four hundred shares of the capital stock of the Haverhill Lime Co., of which the par value was $5 per share; that the defendant at the time, and in consideration of tins sale, agreed to buy the four…

Relies on Thorndike v. Locke

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1876-03-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently January 1973

1 federal appellate · 16 state decisions — followed in 10 states

6018761880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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Ames, J.

¶1We see no ground upon which these exceptions can be sustained. Upon the first and third counts of the declaration, the evidence was conflicting as to the question whether the defendant’s contract to take back and pay for the stock in the Haverhill Lime Company was made by him personally and on his own account, or whether in making it he was acting, and was known by the plaintiff to be acting, merely as the agent of another person. This was purely a question of fact, and was submitted to the jury with instructions to which we see no valid objection. The presiding judge did not adopt the defendant’s language, but the instruction given included all that was suggested in his request.

¶2With regard to the ruling given in answer to the second prayer for instructions, it was strictly correct, and in conformity to the *58decision of this court in Thorndike v. Locke, 98 Mass. 340, and the earlier case of Thompson v. Alger, 12 Met. 428. The stock had properly been tendered to the defendant before suit brought, and the tender was renewed at the trial.

¶3In the defendant’s third prayer for instructions, the general' rule as to a broker’s right to charge commissions may have been correctly stated, but the plaintiff’s claim rested upon an alleged special contract upon the subject of his compensation,. and the jury were correctly instructed that, if such contract were proved, he was entitled to the commission as agreed.

¶4Exceptions overruled.

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