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126 Mass. 228

Merrill v. Merrill

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 16, 1879

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1879-01-16

Libel for divorce from the bond of matrimony, alleging impotency on the part of the libellee.

Relies on Nourse v. Henshaw

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-01-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 1961

4 state decisions

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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.

¶1Under the circumstances in evidence, the testimony that the libeEee had said that she “ could not have connection with any man ” would warrant the inference that she meant that she was physically incapable of such connection, and, if so understood, would, taken together with the other evidence in the case, justify a finding that she was impotent, as charged in the libel. The presiding judge having ruled otherwise as matter of law, without passing upon the question of fact, the ruling is a subject of exception. Nourse v. Henshaw, 123 Mass. 96.

¶2Exceptions sustained.

¶3At April term 1879, the case was heard by the Chief Justice upon the same evidence, and the Ebel dismissed

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