Clay v. Barlow

Decided November 16, 1877

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1877-11-16

Writ, dated February 21,1876, returnable to the Superior Court, and describing each party as having his usual place of business in Boston in the County of Suffolk, and the cause of action thus; “ In an action of contract or tort. To the damage of the plaintiff (as he says) the sum of five hundred dollars.” The declaration filed with the writ contained a single count upon an account annexed for $81 for goods sold on December 21, 1875.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-11-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently March 1977

3 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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Gray, C. J.

¶1The words “debt or damages demanded,” in the St. of 1875, e. 106, § 1, regulating the jurisdiction of the municipal courts of Boston, as in other statutes of the Commonwealth, defining the jurisdiction of courts by like words, refer to the ad damnum in the writ, and not to the amount claimed in the declaration or proved at the trial. Chamberlain v. Cochran, 8 Pick. 522. Hapgood v. Doherty, 8 Gray, 373. Trees v. Rushworth, 9 Gray, 47. Ladd v. Kimball, 12 Gray, 139. Ashuelot Bank v. Pearson, 14 Gray, 521.

¶2The other objection, so far as it relates to the writ, was for a defect of form in process, upon which the decision of the court below was final; and, so far as it relates to the declaration, *380could not be taken otherwise than by demurrer. Gen. Sta. & 114, § 10; e. 115, §7 e. 129, § 2, el. 5; §§ 7, 12. Barlow v. Leavitt, 12 Cush. 483. Judgment affirmed.