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13 Mass. 361

Pratt v. Putnam

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1816

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1816-09-15

This was an action of trespass quare clausum, fregit, originally brought before a justice of the peace ; and the defendants there pleaded not guilty, and also soil and freehold. The cause was carried to the Common Pleas according to the statute, and thence came tc, this Court by appeal.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1816-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 1911

6 state decisions

2018161820183018401850186018701880189019001910decided

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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Parker, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court. It has never been considered necessary, that the attorney, to whom seizin is delivered by the sheriff, when he extends an execution upon real estate according to the statute, should be regularly constituted attorney by deed. On the contrary, it was decided some years since by this Court, before the commencement of our reports, that the attorney of record, under whose management the judgment had been recovered, might, without any further authority, receive seizin for the creditor.

¶2Neither do we see any reason, why any person, undertaking to act in this respect for the creditor, may not be legally considered his attorney for this purpose, if he have the previous request of the creditor, or his subsequent ratification. That assent or ratification will be presumed, unless the creditor shall, within a reasonable time after notice of the transaction, disaffirm the doings of the person assuming to act as his attorney.

¶3It must be taken for granted, that the execution, and the proceedings under it, were registered within the time prescribed by the stat*293ute ; and this act of registering is a sufficient proof of the creditors’ ratification of the levy, and of the seizin taken by Stratton.

¶4As to the objection, that the sheriff has returned that he delivered seizin to Stratton as agent, and not as attorney, we think this wholly unimportant. The words agent #and attorney are frequently used synonymously ; and it ought not to be in the power of a sheriff, who uses one instead of the other, by ignorance or design, to defeat the creditor’s title.

¶5The attachment having been made before the deed from Mien, under which the defendant claims, and a levy having been regularly made within thirty days after judgment, the title of the plaintiffs must prevail; so that judgment must be entered according to the verdict

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