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18 Cal. 76

Brown v. Harter

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1861

California Supreme Court · decided 1861-07-01

Suit for a mining claim. After the Court below had instructed the jury they retired, and being unable to agree, returned for further instructions, which having been given, the jury again retired, and being still unable to agree, came into Court, when the Court, of its own motion, instructed them to find for defendant, plaintiff excepting, and demanding permission to become nonsuited, and that the same be entered before the jury again retired.

Relies on Hancock Ditch Co. v. Bradford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1861-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 1938

5 state decisions

3018611870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Baldwin, J. delivered the opinion of the Court

¶1Field C. J. and Cope, J. concurring.

¶2The points on this appeal are merely technical. They have *77either been decided heretofore or are not of difficulty. The only one we think it necessary to notice is the refusal to permit the non-suit after the jury had retired. Some obscurity possibly exists in the opinion in Hancock Ditch Co. v. Bradford, (13 Cal. 637) in the definition of the word “ trial,” as used in the one hundred and forty-eighth section of the Practice Act; but the expressions used are explained in the subsequent portions of the opinion.

¶3The Practice Act does not give an arbitrary right to become nonsuit after the case has been finally submitted to the jury, though it exists at any time before such final submission and their retirement.

¶4Judgment affirmed.

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