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168 Mass. 296

White v. Sander

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1897-05-19

Two actions OF TORT, that of the female plaintiff being to recover damages for injuries alleged to have been caused her by the throwing of a stone by the defendant through a closed blind into a room in which she then was, and the action of the male plaintiff, who was her husband, being to recover damages for the loss of his wife’s services caused by said act.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-05-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently June 1978

10 state decisions

30189719001910192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Allen, J.

¶1There was no evidence that the defendant had any intention to injure the female plaintiff, or that he was aware of her delicate condition of health. The house did not belong to her, but to her father, with whom the defendant had had an altercation. The defendant’s declared purpose was to injure the house, and he threw a large stone against it in her presence. She then ran into the front room with her little child, whereupon a large stone was wilfully thrown by the defendant, which passed through one of the blinds, all of the blinds upon the front windows being closed. This greatly frightened her, though she was not struck or touched. We do not understand by the bill of exceptions that the defendant knew that she was in that room, or that he had any purpose either to hit or to frighten her , or that the case was designed to present to us an intentional injury to her or to her property. These elements being absent, the defendant was not responsible in damages for her fright, or the consequent injury to her health. Spade v. Lynn & Boston Railroad, ante, 285. _

¶2Exceptions sustained.

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