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20 N.H. 490

Webb v. Cole

Superior Court of New Hampshire

Decided January 15, 1846

Superior Court of New Hampshire · decided 1846-01-15

Assumpsit, for money paid, laid out and expended. The action was appealed from a justice of the peace. The evidence tended to show that the plaintiff hired one Samuel Moore to drive his team to Portland and back, with merchandize, and furnished him with money to pay his expenses: That Moore took for the defendant two axes to be repaired, and when the defendant called for them, he said he had no money by him then.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1846-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently January 1934

5 state decisions

201846185018601870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Gilchrist, J.

¶1The law does not permit one, by voluntarily performing a service or expending money for another, to make that other his debtor. The cases of implied assumpsit have arisen upon the request of the party supposed to have been benefitted by the services or disbursements. The case furnishes no evidence that the defendant requested the plaintiff to pay out the money for which he has instituted this suit. On the contrary, it appears that the witness, Moore, was the party applied to, and who undertook to procure the work to be done for the defendant. It is said that Moore was the agent of the plaintiff Nothing of the kind appears. Moore was employed by the plaintiff to go to Portland for a specific object, and was furnished with money to be applied to that object, and nothing else. There are certain purposes for which the relation of principal and agent may be established by an act of ratification subsequent to the vicarious *492act. But .no sucb effect can follow tbe ratification as to constitute a privity between these two parties against the will and without the consent of the defendant.

¶2The instructions of the court were, therefore, erroneous, ■and the verdict must consequently he set aside and a

¶3New trial granted.

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