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154 Mass. 498

Fay v. Vanderford

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided October 24, 1891

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1891-10-24

Appeal, by Alice M. Fay, from a decree of the Probate Court that the omission of her father, Frederick C. Vanderford, to provide for her in his will was intentional, and was not occasioned by accident or mistake. At the trial in this court, before Holmes, J., upon the issue framed and submitted to a jury, whether such omission to provide for the appellant was intentional or whether it was occasioned by accident or mistake, the jury answered that it was not intentional.

Relies on Newell v. Homer · Ross v. New England Mutual Insurance

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1891-10-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently September 1985

8 state decisions

301891190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Allen, J.

¶1The presiding justice framed an issue for the jury, and after trial and verdict he set the verdict aside and discharged the issue. There was a memorandum stating the reason, but the petitioner, having appealed from the order discharging the issue, objects that the memorandum is no part of the record, and ought not to be considered. We therefore lay that aside. The petitioner certainly was not entitled to a trial by jury as a matter of right. The exercise of discretion in discharging the issue, or in refusing on application seasonably made to frame an issue, is reviewable by the full court. But we have not before us the means of saying that the presiding justice was wrong. The framing of issues for a jury in probate cases is by no means a matter of course; but it is to be granted or refused, in each particular case, in the discretion of the presiding justice. In the present case there was a trial, so that the presiding justice was familiar with the facts; and in the absence of anything to show that he was wrong, his decision must stand. Ross v. New England Ins. Co. 120 Mass. 113, 117. Newell v. Homer, 120 Mass. 277, 281.

¶2Decree affirmed.

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