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138 Mass. 193

Commonwealth v. Coolidge

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided December 1, 1884

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1884-12-01

Complaint to the District Court of East Norfolk, for keeping and maintaining a common nuisance, to wit, a certain tenement in Holbrook used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors, on July 1, 1883, and on divers other days and times between that day and April 26, 1884.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1884-12-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently October 1928

6 state decisions

3018841890190019101920decided

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.

¶1It cannot be held, as matter of law, that there was not sufficient evidence in this case to justify the verdict of the jury. While a single sale of intoxicating liquor might not be sufficient evidence to prove that the defendant kept a nuisance under the statute, yet the sale may be made under such circumstances as to indicate that it was made in the course *194of the defendant’s usual business. In this case, it was proved that the defendant kept an apothecary shop, and sold whiskey therein to one Delano; it was for the jury to say whether, from the circumstances of the sale, from the manner in which Delano and his companion called for the whiskey, and from the readiness with which the defendant supplied it, without any hesitation or question, it was fairly to be inferred that he was in the habit of selling intoxicating liquor in his shop.

¶2Exceptions overruled.

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