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141 Mass. 7

Groustra v. Bourges

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 11, 1886

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1886-01-11

Tort. The declaration alleged that, on February 13, 1883, the plaintiff was in the lawful occupation of a store on Fleet Street, in Boston; that, while in such occupation, the defendant, intending to injure him bodily and ruin his business, unlawfully employed several persons to enter his store for the purpose of maltreating him and throwing him and the contents of his store into the street; that several persons so unlawfully employed entered the plaintiff’s store, and, in…

Relies on Behan v. Williams · O'Callaghan v. Cronan

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1886-01-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 1951

10 state decisions

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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 →

Morton, C. J.

¶1The plaintiff occupied his store as the tenant at will of the defendant. The defendant had the legal right to terminate this tenancy by giving a lease to Hallett, and, after the lease was given, Hallett had the legal right, after due notice, to eject the plaintiff in a peaceable manner. It is immaterial what his motives were. An action cannot be maintained against him, or against any person acting with him, or advising and procuring him to act, unless either the act complained of, or the means by which it was accomplished, ■ are shown to be unlawful. O’Callaghan v. Cronan, 121 Mass. 114. The plaintiff cannot maintain this action against the defendant for advising and procuring Hallett to assert and enforce his legal rights, even if the defendant was actuated by malice, because the plaintiff’s rights are not invaded, and he sustains no legal injury. The evidence offered by the plaintiff, and excluded by the court, was therefore immaterial.

¶2The motion for a new trial was addressed to the discretion of the Superior Court. The bill of exceptions does not show that the presiding judge ruled upon any question of law; but only that, upon the evidence before him, he in his discretion refused a new trial. No exception lies to this exercise of his discretion. Behan v. Williams, 123 Mass. 366.

¶3Exceptions overruled.

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