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165 Mass. 256

Martin v. Collins

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided February 26, 1896

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1896-02-26

Tort, for false imprisonment. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Sheldon, J., it appeared in evidence that the plaintiff was duly sentenced by the Police Court of Lowell for drunkenness,.on September 9, 1893, to six months’ imprisonment at the workhouse in Lowell; that the court issued a precept or mittimus upon the sentence in due form, and committed the same for service to one Cawley, an officer authorized to serve it, who by virtue thereof took the plaintiff to…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1896-02-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 2010

3 federal appellate · 1 district · 2 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.

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Allen, J.

¶1By Pub. Sts. c. 215, § 28, it was made the official duty of the officer who served the mittimus to leave with the keeper of the prison an attested copy thereof with his return thereon, and this is a sufficient warrant to the keeper for the detention of the party committed. The copy takes the place of a precept addressed to the keeper. It is contended for the plaintiff that the above section of the statute contemplates that a correct copy shall be left. But the keeper may and must assume the attested copy to be correct, unless there is something to show the contrary. An inaccurate copy may be voidable, but if properly attested it will warrant the keeper in detaining the person committed, at least until he knows or has reason to believe that there is an error. In the present case, the plaintiff should have taken steps to have the mistake corrected, or at any *258rate should have informed the defendant that there was a mistake. But he did neither. The defendant had no reason to think the copy erroneous; and there was no negligence on his part in failing to ascertain the existence of the error. Without going further than the facts of the present case, we think the defendant was justified in assuming that the copy was correct, and that he is not liable to the plaintiff in damages. See Wilmarth v. Burt, 7 Met. 257, 259, 260.

¶2Judgment for the defendant.

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