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168 Mass. 19

Burns v. Stuart

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided February 26, 1897

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1897-02-26

<p>Dog — Damage frcyn Bite — Evidence — License.</p> <p>A license for a dog, issued prior to an act of biting for which the licensee is sued, is not admissible in the action to corroborate his evidence that the only dog which he ever owned was of a certain breed, weight, and color, differing in these particulars from the dog described in the plaintiff’s testimony as the one which bit him.</p>

Relies on Sewall v. Sewall · Murchie v. Cornell

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-02-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 1939

7 state decisions

3018971900191019201930decided

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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Holmes, J.

¶1This was an action of tort for the bite of a dog. The dog which bit the plaintiff was described in the testimony as a bull terrier or bull dog, weighing about fourteen pounds, and of a light color with a spot. The defendant denied that he owned the dog described, and testified that the only dog which he ever owned was a fox terrier weighing about ten pounds, white, without a spot; that he owned this dog while living in Somerville, as he had done until about two weeks before, and that he had had it licensed there. He identified and offered the license. It was excluded,' and the defendant excepted.

¶2Presumably the description of the dog in the license was given to the city clerk by the defendant. There might be circumstances where the fact that he had made such a declaration before the existence of the present interest would be material. See Murchie v. Cornell, 155 Mass. 60, 63, 64. But, so far as appears in the exceptions, his testimony under oath would have gained no legal corroboration from his having said the same thing when not sworn and not subject to cross-examination. See Sewall v. Sewall, 122 Mass. 156, 163.

¶3 Exceptions overruled.

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