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15 Vt. 435

Spears v. Forrest

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided February 15, 1843

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1843-02-15

This was a complaint for bastardy, carried on against the defendant by the overseers of the poor of the town of Guilford, under the statute — the said overseers having undertaken to control and manage said suit, and signed a certificate agreeably to the 13th section of the statute, to indemnify the complainant from the cost of said suit, and the support of the bastard child.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1843-02-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1914

8 state decisions

2018431850186018701880189019001910decided

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 opinion of the court was delivered by

Bennett, J.

¶2We think no objection can be raised as to the competency of the overseers of the poor of Guilford as witnesses, which would not apply to other inhabitants of the town. If they have an interest, it is but a corporate one; and such an objection is removed by statute.

¶3The evidence of common prostitution is not admissible to impeach the character of Esther .Spears, as a witness. After two direct decisions upon this very point in our own courts, founded, as I think they are, upon authority, the question cannot be considered, with us, as an open one, whatever the decisions may have been in some of our sister states. See Greenl. Ev. 512, 513, and n. 3.

¶4This prosecution, it is well settled, is but a civil action, the object of which is to obtain an order of filiation. It is not a case in which the statute has required a minute of the true day, month and year when the complaint was exhibited.

¶5The result is, there is no error in the proceedings of the county court.

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