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45 Mich. 337

Farmer v. Hunter

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided January 19, 1881

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1881-01-19

<p>Forcible detainer — Proof of defendant’s rights.</p> <p>Where suit is brought before a justice for a forcible detainer, and the complaint alleges the entry to have been peaceable, defendant can show that he entered under a bona fide claim, of title and without collusion with the complainant’s tenant.</p> <p>A proceeding for forcible entry and detainer does not lie against one whose entry was peaceable and without collusion with a tenant.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Reversed · Decided 1881-01-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently November 1913

4 state decisions

201881189019001910decided

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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Campbell, J.

¶1Hunter complained, before a justice of the peace, of Farmer and Driscoll of peaceably entering and forcibly detaining his premises. He prevailed both before the justice and on appeal, where the circuit judge refused to *338allow the defendants to show a right to the land and directed a verdict for plaintiff.

¶2On the trial plaintiff showed acts of force in keeping him out. He also undertook to show that the contest arose on occasion of his attempt to re-enter on a terminated lease. He seems to have claimed that respondents got in collusively by arrangement with his outgoing tenant.

¶3But they introduced testimony to show that they entered •under a bona fide .claim of title and without any collusion whatever. Hunter could not under his complaint dispute the peaceable nature of their entry. If they entered peaceably and without collusion with Hunter’s tenant, they were not in privity with him, and could not have their claims of right tried in this summary way. If they had title and entered in that way they had a right to continue in possession and Hunter had no claim against them, but would himself have been a trespasser by using force to dispossess them.

¶4The court erred in directing a verdict on facts not admitted, but disputed on the main question involved..

¶5Judgment must be reversed with costs and a new trial granted.

The other Justices concurred.
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