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121 Mass. 354

Commonwealth v. Parmenter

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 4, 1876

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1876-11-04

Indictment, under the Gen. Sts. c. 161, § 54, charging that the defendant, at a time and place named, “ devising and intending by unlawful ways and means to obtain the money, goods and chattels of Ehoda Corser, and with intent to cheat and defraud said Ehoda Corser, did then and there unlawfully, knowingly and designedly, falsely pretend and represent to said Ehoda Corser that a certain promissory note of the tenor following, that is to say, ‘1464.00. Worcester, Mass.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Henry · Williams v. Hayward

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1876-11-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently February 1926

1 federal appellate · 7 state decisions

40187618801890190019101920decided

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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Lord, J.

¶1It is no ground for quashing an indictment for obtaining property by false pretences, that it may contain some *356immaterial allegation, or that some one of the pretences charged may not be properly so charged, if upon its face there appears to be an offence stated with proper precision and formality.

¶2The fact that the defendant represented that the note in evidence was secured by mortgage was competent evidence, and the instructions required in relation to it would depend upon the state of the evidence, and will be presumed to be proper if no objection is made to them. Ho such objection appears, and no error is therefore to be presumed.

¶3The objection that there was a variance between the note produced and the note described in the declaration is decided to be unfounded. Williams v. Hayward, 117 Mass. 532. Commonwealth v. Henry, 118 Mass. 460.

¶4The objection that the false pretences must have been in writing does not appear to have been raised upon the trial; nor does it appear affirmatively that they were not in writing; nor is the case at bar within the class of cases in which the statute requires the false pretences to be in writing. Gen. Sts. c. 161, § 54.

¶5Exceptions overruled.

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