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4 R.I. 489

Draper v. Bishop

Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Decided March 6, 1857

Supreme Court of Rhode Island · decided 1857-03-06

Petition for a trial of a defaulted case, commenced against the petitioner at the March term of this court, 1856, upon the ground, that the petitioner was not aware that it was necessary for him to defend a suit in order to prevent judgment from passing against him by default therein, whereby the respondent had recovered against him, without cause, judgment for a large amount.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1857-03-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1941

4 state decisions

101857186018701880189019001910192019301940decided

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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Ames, C. J.

¶1 The petitioner can hardly expect us to grant his application upon the supposition that a judgment obtained against him by default ought not stand, when he has not seen fit even to give us his own affidavit to the truth of the statement of defence made in his petition. It is very late, and not a little suspicious, to come .with such a petition as this, a year after a judgment has been, as is alleged, obtained unjustly, and by mistake of the debtor as to the proper means of defence; and after the petitioner has been an unsuccessful applicant for the benefit of. the poor debtor’s act, which supposes the validity of the very judgment which he now seeks to set aside. In the mean time, too, the state of things has changed; the execu-' tion creditor having filed a bill in equity against the voluntary assignee of the debtor for an account and application of the assigned assets to the payment of his debt, — an expense from which he would have been saved if any diligence in applying for the relief now sought had been used by the petitioner. This petition looks very much like a new mode of defending against such a bill; and must be dismissed, with costs.

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