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151 Mass. 118

Murphy v. Rogers

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided February 26, 1890

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1890-02-26

Contract upon four promissory notes, dated December 2, 1887, given by the defendant to the plaintiff. Trial in tbe Superior Court, without a jury, before Lathrop, J., who found the following facts, and reported the case for the determination of this court, in substance as follows. The notes in question were given to the plaintiff in renewal of a promissory note for $167.75, dated December 10, 1886, and signed by the defendant.

Relies on State ex rel. White v. Wright · State v. Leighton · Harbaugh v. People

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1890-02-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 1934

5 state decisions

2018901900191019201930decided

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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C. Allen, J.

¶1The second ruling which was requested should have been given. If the plaintiff kept a billiard saloon, and played with the defendant upon the terms that the defendant should pay for the use of the table by both parties in case he lost, but otherwise that he should not pay anything, that was gaming, within the meaning of the Pub. Sts. c. 99, § 5.* So also it was gaming if they played together upon the terms that the defendant, in case he lost, should pay the plaintiff for liquors or cigars to be used by the plaintiff, but otherwise not. In such case, the price of the use of the table, or of the liquor and cigars, was money won by the plaintiff from the defendant by gaming. As to the price of the liquors, this was settled by Commonwealth v. Taylor, 14 Gray, 26, and Commonwealth v. Grourdier, 14 Gray, 390; and the price for the use of the table comes within the same principle. If the facts were as assumed in the second request for a ruling, the original note was given in part for money won by gaming, and was void as between the parties by virtue of the Pub. Sts. c. 99, § 5; and the notes now sued on, which were given in renewal thereof, stand no better.

¶2As supporting a similar view of the law, see State v. Leighton, 23 N. H. 167; State v. Maurer, 7 Iowa, 406; State v. Book, 41 Iowa, 550; Ward v. State, 17 Ohio St. 32; Walker v. State, 2 Swan, 287. The cases cited by the plaintiff, and Harbaugh v. People, 40 Ill. 294, are opposed.

¶3New trial granted.

¶4 This section is as follows: —

¶5“ All notes, bills, bonds, mortgages, or other securities or conveyances in which the whole or part of the consideration is money or goods won by gaming or playing at cards, dice, or any other game, or by betting on the sides or hands of persons gaming, or for reimbursing or repaying money knowingly lent or advanced for gaming or betting at the time and place of such gaming or betting to a person so gaming or betting, shall be void and of no effect as between the parties to the same.”

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