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6 N.H. 430

Putney v. Day

Superior Court of New Hampshire

Decided December 15, 1833

Superior Court of New Hampshire · decided 1833-12-15

This was an action of trespass, for breaking and entering the close of the plaintiffs, in Warner, and cutting and carrying away forty pine trees. The cause was tried at February term, of the common pleas, 1833, and a verdict taken for the plaintiffs, subject to the opinion of this court, upon the following case.

Relies on Howard v. Easton

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1833-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently December 1948

14 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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Richardson, C. J.

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The question is, whether a verbal license, given by Arnos Putney to the defendants, in December, 1828, could avail them as a defence under the circumstances of this case. If it could, the verdict must be set aside and the evidence admitted. If it could not, the verdict is rights and the plaintiffs entitled to judgment.

¶3The contract to sell the trees, in this case, was within the statute of frauds, and it was essential that it should be in writing, 1 Laws, 535; 2 Starkie’s Ev. 598; 6 East, 602; 2 B. & P. 452; 2 Taunton, 38; 7 Johns. 205.

¶4Under certain circumstances, a sale of a growing crop, or of timber, is not within the statute. 9 B. & C. 561; 5 ditto, 829, 11 East, 362; 2 M. & S. 204. But in this case the contract was clearly within the statute.

¶5In Peace v. Gibson, 6 Greenleaf, 81, a sale of all the timber trees standing on a lot of land, the purchaser to have two years to take the timber, was held to be a sale only of the timber taken within the two years. And this decision seems to us to be reasonable. For otherwise, the purchaser might keep the timber encumbering the land as long as he pleased.

¶6The license then given by Arnos Putney, in December, 1828, was without any consideration to sustain it.

¶7A license, which, in its nature, amounts to a grant of an interest in land must be in writing. 11 Mass. Rep. 533. But a parol license executed cannot be revoked. 8 East, 308. 4 Pickering, 368; 7 Bingham, 682.

¶8And a parol license to be exercised upon land and granted upon a good consideration is valid, and cannot be revoked. 7 Taunton, 374.

¶9*432But a license without consideration may he revoked. 1 Cowen, 243, and it is clear that the license given by Putney, in December, 1828, expired with his liie. 6 N. H. Rep. 11; 2 Mason, 244.

¶10It is clear, then, that the evidence offered by the defendants was rightly rejected, and there must be

¶11Judgment on the verdict.

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