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13 Mass. 221

Commonwealth v. Howard

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1816-05-15

This was a writ of error, brought to procure the reversal of a judgment heretofore rendered in this Court, in favor of the Commonwealth against these plaintiffs in error, upon an information filed by the Attorney-General, October term, 1814, against them and another person, for intruding upon lands of the Commonwealth in Brownfield, in the County of Oxford, and cutting down and carrying away sundry trees thereon growing.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1816-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently December 1965

12 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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Per Curiam.

¶1We think the judgment erroneous ; but the infor mation is correct, and the conviction follows it. There is no question, that, where a statute inflicts a penalty, partly to the use of the Commonwealth, and partly to the use of an informer, the government may sue for the whole. So was the case here. The statute inflicts certain penalties for cutting trees of certain descriptions, “to be recovered by bill, indictment, or information, in any court of record in this Commonwealth proper to try the same ; two thirds thereof to the use of the Commonwealth, and one third thereof to the informer.” Had Chase, or any one else, commenced a prosecution qui tarn, before the Attorney-General had filed his information, the latter must have failed. But that was not the case here; and the Commonwealth was entitled to judgment for the whole penalty. The objection, then, does not apply to the merits. It amounts to no more than this, that the Court * has misappropriated a portion of the penally which these plaintiffs in error had legally incurred.

¶2The judgment is erroneous in awarding any part of the penalty to Chase. For this cause it is reversed ; and a judgment is to be entered, instead of it, that the Commonwealth recover the whole penalty to its own use.

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