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124 Minn. 365

Davis v. Condit

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Decided January 23, 1914

Supreme Court of Minnesota · decided 1914-01-23

Action in the district court for Hennepin county to recover $20,-000. Erom an order, Steele, J., sustaining defendant’s demurrer to the complaint, plaintiff appealed.

Relies on Joyce v. Great Northern Railway Co. · Case v. Smith

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1914-01-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently April 1980

8 state decisions

4019141920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Per Curiam.

¶1Appeal from an order sustaining a demurrer to the complaint.

¶2The complaint alleges that the defendant maliciously debauched and seduced the affianced wife of the plaintiff, and alienated her affections, and maliciously interfered with the marriage contract then subsisting, causing him properly to break it.

¶3The common law gives the affianced husband no cause of action for the seduction of his affianced wife and no statute gives one. See Case v. Smith, 107 Mich. 416, 65 N. W. 279, 31 L.R.A. 282.

¶4The right to recover for alienation of affections or for criminal *366conversation is a right arising from the marital relation. It is not extended to parties to a betrothal.

¶5The plaintiff claims that the act of the defendant was a malicious interference with the marriage contract between himself and his fiancee. In Joyce v. Great Northern R. Co. 100 Minn. 225, 229, 110 N. W. 975, it is held that a wrongful and malicious interference by a stranger with the contract relations of others, by causing one to commit a breach, is an actionable tort. The breach of contract in the case at bar was by the plaintiff, not by his affianced wife. Because of her unchastity he was justified in breaking the contract; but we are unable to hold that the situation of the parties is such that the plaintiff has a cause of action against the defendant for bringing, about her unchastity, though he acted maliciously.

¶6Order affirmed.

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