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58 N.H. 156

Carter v. Jackson

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided August 5, 1877

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1877-08-05

Trespass, quare clcmsum, reported in 56 N. H. 364. The plaintiff was allowed to amend, by adding a count in trespass de bonis, for the same cause of action, and the defendant excepted. The plaintiff claimed as administrator of Adam Roberts, under a deed made to Adam Roberts by the plaintiff as administrator of William N. Roberts. The plaintiff’s wife was a witness to that deed, and the defendant excepted to the ruling that the deed was not defective on that account.

Relies on Stantons v. Thompson · State v. Hastings · Carlton v. Carlton

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-08-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently January 1909

5 state decisions

301877188018901900decided

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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Stanley, J.

¶1 The amendment was properly allowed. It did not change either the form or the cause of action. Burnham v. Plant, 57 N. H. 41. The objection to the competency of the plaintiff’s wife, as a witness of the deed under which he claimed, is based on the relationship between them. Formerly this might have been a valid objection, since attesting witnesses were required to be competent, at the time of attestation, to testify to the fact which they attested. 1 Greenl. Ev., s. 573; Carlton v. Carlton, 40 N. H. 14; Bank v. Root, 2 Met. 522, 533. But as the wife, at the time this deed was executed, was competent to testify for her husband in any case not involving a violation of marital confidence, the objection to her signing as a witness, if any such ever was valid, cannot now avail the defendant. Gen. St., c. 209, s. 22.

¶2*157 The grounds of the motion for a nonsuit, having all been considered in this case on the former transfer, will not now be reconsidered. That decision must stand as the law for this case. A cause will not ordinarily be reheard in that way, and there is nothing to take this case out of the operation of the general rule. Stantons v. Thompson, 49 N. H. 272; Bell v. Woodward, 47 N. H. 539; S. C., 48 N. H. 437, 442; Bell v. Lamprey, ante, p. 124.

¶3 The ruling of the court upon the question of the comparison of handwriting was correct. State v. Hastings, 53 N. H. 452.

¶4 The general verdict was in accordance with the answers to the special questions submitted to the jury without objection, and the objection to the verdict on this ground cannot be sustained.

¶5 Judgment on the verdict.

Bingham, J., did not sit.
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