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42 Me. 86

Marks v. Gray

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided July 1, 1856

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1856-07-01

On Report from Nisi Prim, Hathaway, J., presiding. This was an action for malicious prosecution. Plea, the general issue, with brief statement. The alleged malicious prosecution, was a suit commenced by the defendant against the plaintiff in this case, and others, for trespass, which was settled at a subsequent term of the Court, as appears by the agreement signed by O. J. Abbott and E. W. Hinckley, attorneys for the parties.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1856-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently August 2002

2 district · 1 state decisions

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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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Tenney, C. J.

¶1The action of Nicholas Gray against George Snow, David M. Hooper and Elisha Marks, was trespass for a breach of the close, and cutting and carrying away the grass growing thereon. The defendants pleaded jointly *89the general issue, and filed a brief statement alleging that the seizin and possession of the land was in Snow, and that Marks had a license from Gray. From the writ, pleadings and agreement, signed by the attorneys for the parties in that action, we infer that the alleged trespass was upon land on which Snow had attempted to levy an execution in his favor against one Albion P. Gray.

¶2The basis of this suit is alleged to be, that Marks, the plaintiff therein, was made a party defendant, in the other action above referred to, for the purpose of preventing him from being a witness in the trial of the same.

¶3The settlement of that action, by the agreement, must be treated as made by all the parties thereto; and the defendants in the same, consent to the payment of the sum of eight dollars for the hay claimed by the defendant Gray.

¶4Whether the circumstances of a particular case, afford to the accuser a probable cause for making the accusation, is a question of law, which arises upon the facts established in evidence. 2 Stark. Ev. 912.

¶5When the defendants in the original action so far admitted the charge in the writ as to agree to allow, in the settlement, a certain sum on account of the trespass, and the action was disposed of according to that settlement, it cannot with propriety be contended by them that there was a want of probable cause. Plaintiff nonsuit.

Rice, Appleton and Goodenow, J. J., concurred.
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