137 Mass. 92
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided March 17, 1884
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1884-03-17
Tort for libel, in accusing the plaintiff of having uttered certain forged bonds. Trial in the Superior Court, without a jury, before Barker, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions, in substance as follows: The defendants gave evidence of the truth of the accusation in the alleged libel.
Relies on Caverly v. McOwen
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1884-03-17
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently January 1937
6 state decisions
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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¶1The omission of the plaintiff to testify in explanation of testimony against him, given by others in his presence, was a proper matter of consideration by the court and of comment by the opposing counsel.
¶2If this were otherwise, the plaintiff should have taken his objection at the trial, and he could not raise the question for the first time upon a motion for a new trial, so as to make it the ground of an exception. Caverly v. McOwen, 126 Mass. 222.
¶3Exceptions overruled.