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61 N.H. 623

Caverno v. Jones

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 5, 1882

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1882-06-05

Trespass, for assault and battery. The court permitted the plaintiff to testify that the defendant made threats to do him bodily harm both before and after the alleged assault, and rejected the record, offered in evidence by the defendant, of the conviction of the plaintiff upon an indictment for an assault growing out of the same affray mentioned in the plaintiff’s writ.

Relies on Bixby v. Dunlap · Hayward v. Bath · Ahearn v. Mann

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1882-06-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently December 1985

11 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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Carpenter, J.

¶1 Evidence of the defendant’s threats to do the plaintiff bodily harm made before the alleged assault was competent. Morrow v. Moses, 28 N. H. 95. Evidence of similar threats made so immediately after the assault as to constitute a part of the res gestee was likewise competent. In the absence of any statement to the contrary, it must be presumed that such was the character of the subsequent threats in question. If they were so remote in time as not to form a part of the principal transaction, it was the defendant’s duty to make the fact appear in his bill of exceptions. Whether, in case it had so appeared, the evidence was competent upon the question of damages, or upon any other question, need not be considered. Bixby v. Dunlap, 56 N. H. 456; Newman v. Goddard, 3 Hun 70; Handy v. Johnson, 5 Md. 450; 2 Gr. Ev., s. 94.

¶2 The record of the plaintiff’s conviction does not show that he pleaded guilty (Burgess v. Burgess, 47 N. H. 395, Green v. Bedell, 48 N. H. 546), and was properly rejected. Chamberlain v. Carlisle, 26 N. H. 540; Hayward v. Bath, 38 N. H. 179, 183, 185; Bradley v. Bradley, 11 Me. 367 ; 2 Stark Ev. 196, 197; 1 Gr. Ev., s. 537.

¶3 There was no error in the instructions to the jury (Ahearn v. Mann, 60 N. H. 472), or in the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict. Tyler v. Stevens, 4 N. H. 116 ; Folsom v. Brawn, 25 N. H. 115, 123; Belknap v. Wendell, 36 N. H. 250.

¶4 Exceptions overruled.

Blodgett, J., did not sit: the others concurred.
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