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54 N.H. 455

Fosgate v. Thompson

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 15, 1874

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1874-06-15

Assumpsit, by Sarah W. Fosgate, executrix of Lockhart Fosgate, to recover the sum of seventy-five dollars which the plaintiff alleges was found due from the defendant to the plaintiff’s testate, upon a settlement of their accounts November 13, 1869. The defendant offered himself as a witness to testify to matters which he claimed were not within the knowledge of the plaintiff’s testate, and about which he, if living, could not for that reason testify.

Relies on Harvey v. Hilliard

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 1919

7 state decisions

5018741880189019001910decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Ladd, J.

¶1In Harvey v. Hilliard, 47 N. H. 551, the plaintiff' was an executor. The defendant offered himself as a witness, and not only claimed that injustice would be done were he excluded, but furnished to the court his own affidavit showing such to be the case, provided the affidavit were believed. The court declined to consider the affidavit, and excluded the witness, and this ruling was sustained. In the present case, the defendant offered himself as a witness to matters which he claimed were not within the knowledge of the testator. This, at the outside, was no more than a claim that injustice would be done were he excluded. So far as the case shows : this claim was not supported by any evidence whatever. The case, therefore, comes far within the doctrine of Harvey v. Hilliard, and the exception

¶2Must be overruled.

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