¶1Under the St. of 1869, c. 426, allowing the party, who produces a witness, to prove by other evidence, not material for any other purpose, that he has made at other times statements inconsistent with his present testimony, the testimony which it is proposed to contradict must have been material to the issue on trial. In the present case, as the question put to the first witness did not fix any time, and therefore does not appear to have been material to the issue on trial, his answer was conclusive, and the admission, against objection, of evidence to contradict it was erroneous. Ryerson v. Abington, 102 Mass. 526. Mayo v. Mayo, 119 Mass. 290. Brooks v. Weeks, 121 Mass. 433. Exceptions sustained.
122 Mass. 5
Force v. Martin
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided January 29, 1877
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1877-01-29
Complaint under the bastardy act. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Allen, J., the respondent called Willard Force, a brother of the complainant, and asked him if he ever saw his brother Horace in bed with the complainant, to which he answered that he never had. He was then asked if he did not so state at the hearing before the justice before whom the first bearing was had. To this question the complainant objected, but the judge overruled the objection.
Relies on Ryerson v. Inhabitants of Abington · Brooks v. Weeks · Mayo v. Mayo
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1877-01-29
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently November 1939
5 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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