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29 Ala. 281

Abercrombie v. Allen

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided June 15, 1856

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1856-06-15

Tried before the Hon. Andrew B. Moore. This action was brought by the appellee, to recover damages for the defendant’s breach of a contract, by which plaintiff agreed to serve him as overseer for the year 1853, at a stipulated price; the complaint alleging, that the defendant, wrongfully, and without cause, discharged plaintiff before the end of his term of service, and prevented him from performing his part of the contract, as he was ready and willing to do.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1856-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently August 1973

8 state decisions

301856186018701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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RICE, C. J.

¶1A party may introduce his own declarations as evidence for himself, when the silence of the other party amounts, in law, to an admission of their truth. But the rule in relation to evidence of that kind, is, that it is to be received with the greatest caution, and never should be received, unless the statement was heard and understood by the party against whom it is offered, and was of such a character, and made under such circumstances, as naturally to call for a reply. — Spencer v. The State, 20 Ala. R. 24 ; Lawson v. The State, ib. 65 ; Watson v. Byers, 6 ib. 393 ; Wheat v. Croom, 1 ib. 349. It is impossible to sustain the ruling of the court below in allowing the plaintiff to prove in this suit that, during the the altercation which occurred on the trial of another suit before the justice of the peace, “ he said, in the presence and hearing of defendant, that he took good care of everything as defendant’s overseer, and that defendant did not deny the same.”

¶2As this error of the court below must work a reversal, we decline to decide the other questions. But as to the objections to parts of the deposition read by plaintiff, we refer to *283McCreary v. Turk, at this term; and as to the other objections, we refer to 2 Cowen & Hill’s Notes to Phil. Ey, (edition of 1839), 761 ; Mendum v. Commonwealth, 6 Band. R. 705 ; Lawson v. The State, supra; Havis v. Taylor, 13 Ala. R. 324.

¶3Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.

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