Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

134 Mass. 189

Commonwealth v. Morrison

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 26, 1883

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1883-01-26

Complaint alleging that the defendant, on June 5, 1881, and on divers other days and times between that day and October 24, 1881, at Rockland, unlawfully exposed and kept for sale intoxicating liquors. Trial in the Superior Court, before Gf-ardner, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows: The government introduced evidence of sales of intoxicating liquors by the defendant on several occasions during the time covered by the complaint.

Relies on Woodward v. Leavitt · Commonwealth v. Tobin · Whittaker v. Inhabitants of West Boylston

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1883-01-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently September 1978 · most notably Peterson v. Hopson (1940), Commonwealth v. Dascalakis (1923)

26 state decisions

801883189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Colburn, J.

¶1The only exception upon which the defendant relies, as the case is presented to us upon her brief, is to the overruling of the third, fourth and fifth grounds, or reasons, stated in her motion for a new trial. No authority is cited except the Pub. Sts. c. 153, § 8.

¶2These reasons for a new trial relate entirely to rulings, or omissions to rule, during the progress of the trial and before verdict, to which the defendant had full opportunity to except, if she saw fit, but omitted to do so; and her motion for a new trial was addressed to the discretion of the court, and to the exercise of that discretion she has no ground of exception. Lowell Gas Light Co. v. Bean, 1 Allen, 274. Kidney v. Richards, 10 Allen, 419. Phillips v. Soule, 6 Allen, 150. Whittaker v. West Boylston, 97 Mass. 273. McAllister v. Burrill, 98 Mass. 334. Behan v. Williams, 123 Mass. 366.

¶3There are cases of motions for new trials, based upon something which has occurred since the trial, or which was not known until after the trial, which raise questions of law, to the rulings upon which exceptions will lie, and it is to such cases that the statute upon which the defendant relies relates. Lowell Gas Light Co. v. Bean, ubi supra. Woodward v. Leavitt, 107 Mass. 453, 460. Commonwealth v. Tobin, 125 Mass. 203. Munde v. Lambie, 125 Mass. 367. Exceptions overruled.

/134/mass/189 · .json · Public domain