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20 How. Pr. 287

Roth v. Meads

New York Supreme Court

Decided January 15, 1861

New York Supreme Court · decided 1861-01-15

This action was duly noticed for trial on the part of the plaintiffs, at the circuit court appointed to be held at Plattsburgh, in the county of Clinton, in October, 1859. Four Avitnesses residing in New York city, a distance of three hundred miles from Plattsburgh, and one residing in Utica, two hundred and fifty miles therefrom, were subpoenaed by plaintiffs, and their full fees paid for travel and one day’s attendance.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1861-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently January 1900

3 state decisions

1018611870188018901900decided

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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Rosekrans, Justice.

¶1There must be a retaxation of the costs herein. The clerk should have allowed to the plaintiffs the traveling fees of the witnesses named, from their respective residences to Plattsburgh, and back, and one day’s attendance for each. The disbursement was necessarily made, and the witnesses were not in fault for their non-attendance in obedience to the subpoena. They had in good faith commenced complying with its command, and continued to obey it until they were stopped midway in their journey to court, by notice that the court would not be held. Under such circumstances no part of the money paid to them could be recovered back by the plaintiffs. The contract between the plaintiffs and the witnesses was entire and could not be apportioned. The part performance of it by the witnesses under the circumstances was a fulfillment of the whole substance of the contract. Their omission to travel on after they were informed that the court would not be held, worked no injury to any one, and must be regarded as a failure to perform an unimportant and nonessential part of the contract.

¶2In Ford agt. Monroe, (6 How. Pr. R., 206,) it was held that a settlement of a suit by the parties or a postponement of it worked a discharge of the witnesses’ liability to attend court, but did not impair his right to retain the money paid to him, and that it could only be recovered back when the witness was' in fault for non-attendance. The motion for retaxation must, for these reasons, be granted.

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