Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

79 N.H. 143

106 A 558

McDonald v. Smith

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided January 7, 1919

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1919-01-07

Case, for slander. Trial by jury and verdict for the plaintiff. After the verdict, the defendant moved (1) to dismiss the suit because it was begun by trustee-process, and (2) to arrest the judgment because the declaration does not state a cause of action. Transferred from the January term, 1918, of the superior court by Marble, J., on the defendant’s exception to the denial of these motions, and (3) to remarks of counsel.

Relies on Barrett v. Cady

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1919-01-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 1981

4 state decisions

2019191920193019401950196019701980decided

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 →

Young, J.

¶1 1. If it were true that the court would have dismissed the suit on motion at any time before the trial, it would not follow that this motion should have been granted, for the court had jurisdiction of both the parties and the cause of action, consequently the defendant could legally do what the case finds he did do, waive his right, if he had such a right, to have the suit dismissed.

¶2 2. When a cause has been tried without objection to the sufficiency of the pleadings, the court will not take the time necessary to investí *144 gate their technical accuracy. “If inaccurate, the error can be corrected by amendment.” Barrett v. Cady, 78 N. H. 60, 65.

¶3 3. So much of the remarks excepted to as charged the defendant with “peddling” the slander over Lyman were immediately withdrawn, consequently the question raised by this exception is whether the evidence warranted counsel in asking the jury to find that the defendant was responsible for the slander being “peddled” all over that town. A witness who heard the defendant make the slanderous statement wrote to a man in Lyman about it; and about that time the plaintiff’s friends who lived in that town began to avoid her. As there was no other reason for their avoiding her shown, it can be found that they had heard of the slander and avoided her for that reason..

¶4 Exceptions overruled.

All concurred.
/79/nh/143 · .json · Public domain