Skinner v. Somes

Decided March 15, 1817

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1817-03-15

The plaintiff declared in debt upon a bond made by the defendant to one John Somes, his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, and upon an assignment thereof by the said John to the plaintiff; and avers notice to the defendant, and a demand and refusal. The defendant demurs generally to the declaration, and the plaintiff joins in demurrer.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1817-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 1927

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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By the Court.

¶1This is the first attempt to maintain an action of debt by the assignee of a bond in his own name. The word assigns has been for centuries inserted in bonds and obligations; but no one has conceived that it gave to them a negotiable property, so as to transfer the right of action upon them to the assignee. In Fenner vs. Mears, the action was assumpsit upon the promise of the obligor to pay to the assignee; and the assignment of a chose in action was always a good consideration for a promise.

¶2We have gone as far in favor of assignments as the authorities or the reason of them would justify us. But to support the present action would be to disregard settled and established rules, founded on sound principles of law, and the highest reason, (a)

¶3Declaration adjudged, bad.

¶4 [Day vs. Whitney, 1 Pick. 503. — Dunn vs. Snell & Al. 15 M.481.— Ed.]