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31 Pa. 14

Conn v. Stumm

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided July 1, 1854

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1854-07-01

The declaration charged that the plaintiff “ retained and employed” the defendant to iron his wagon, and the defendant “ undertook and promised to do it with care and skill;” and the breach assigned was, that “not regarding his promise and undertaking,” he did not do it with proper care and skill. The plea was non assumpsit.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1854-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 1928

4 state decisions

1018541860187018801890190019101920decided

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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¶1The opinion of the court was delivered in by

Lowrie, J.

¶2The decision below is founded on a misunderstanding of the case of Zell v. Arnold, 2 Pa. R. 292; a case which has twice before been misunderstood: 7 Watts 170 ; 12 State R. 381. All that is decided there is, that a justice of the peace has no jurisdiction of an action of tort for such negligence where the claim is over $100. No one doubts that assumpsit will lie in such a case; for the law implies a contract for care and skill, not as a fiction, but as a fact, from the “ understanding,” 13 S. & R. 44, or “ course of dealing between the parties;" 17 Id. 371; 6 Watts 387. This declaration is plainly in assumpsit. And certainly, when the law gives jurisdiction to justices “ of all causes of action arising from contract, express or implied,” it means to include such cases as this; else an action for carelessly soldering a tin bucket would be beyond the judicial competence of a justice. Other analogous cases show plainly enough that the justice has jurisdiction. 6 Watts 47; 7 Id. 175, 542.

¶3Judgment reversed and judgment for plaintiff with costs.

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