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42 Conn. 9

Murray v. Jennings

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided January 15, 1875

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1875-01-15

Trespass on the case for fraud in the exchange of a horse by the defendant for a yoke of oxen ; brought to the Court of' Common Pleas of Fairfield County and tried to the court, on tlie general issue, before FeForest, J. The court found the following facts: On the 15th of March, 1874, the plaintiff owned the pair of oxen in the declaration mentioned, which she had bought five years before for $190, and which she valued at $200, which were worth, as beef cattle, only $100.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1927

12 state decisions

50187518801890190019101920decided

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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Phelps, J.

¶1The plaintiff owned a pair of oxen, and the defendant a horse, which they exchanged. The horse was unsound, and known to be so by the defendant, who fraudulently represented it to be otherwise. The oxen were worth $100, and the horse with its unsoundness $125, and if sound, as represented by the defendant, would have been worth $225. The plaintiff with no fraud or fault on her part relied on the truth of the statement made to her by the defendant, and without that would not have made the exchange. The Court of Common Pleas rendered judgment for the plaintiff for the difference between the actual value of the horse and what it *13would liave been worth if in the condition represented by the defendant, and the defendant moves for a new trial for the •alleged reason that the plaintiff had suffered no injury by the exchange of property with the defendant and therefore was entitled to no damage.

¶2We concede to the defendant the established principle that the plaintiff must have sustained some injury, and that both fraud and damage must have concurred, to establish legal liability. In one sense the plaintiff would seem to have suffered no damage, but the law gives her the benefit of the contract, and places her with respect to it and to all her rights under it in the same position as if no fraud had been practiced upon her, and as if the horse was as sound and valuable as she had a right from the defendant’s representations to her to believe it was. In that view of the case she was injured to the extent for which the judgment was given. We are satisfied the court below adopted the correct rule, and a new trial is not advised.

¶3In this opinion the other judges concurred.

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