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123 Mass. 397

Roberts v. Spencer

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 26, 1877

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1877-11-26

Contract against the defendants as members of the firm of Spencer, Vila & Company, on two checks, dated in June, 1872, signed by the firm name, and payable to the plaintiff or order, and on an account due the plaintiff from the firm for the purchase and sale of stocks. Spencer filed an answer containing a general denial, and alleging that he was not a member of the firm at the time of the transactions in question.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-11-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently February 1939

6 state decisions

201877188018901900191019201930decided

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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By the Court.

¶1All the exceptions are to the admissibility uf evidence, and none of them can be sustained. The statements published in newspapers regularly taken by the plaintiff were competent upon the question whether he knew that Spencer had withdrawn from the partnership before the contract sued on was made. The plaintiff’s affidavit to the proof of his claim in bankruptcy against the other partners was admissible upon the same question, and to contradict his testimony that he supposed Spencer to be a member of the partnership, and relied upon him in making the contract. It would have been futile to give the plaintiff notice to produce a letter which he testified he had not in his possession and had never received.

¶2Exceptions overruled.

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