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81 Me. 403

Gore v. Curtis

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided March 19, 1889

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1889-03-19

On exceptions. This was an action for indecent assault and battery upon the plaintiff, a married woman. The defendant offered testimony to prove specific acts of nnchastity on the part of the plaintiff with other men than the defendant prior to the alleged assault. The presiding justice ruled that such evidence was inadmissible, but allowed the defendant to submit evidence of the plaintiff’s general reputation for chastity. To this ruling the defendant excepted.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-03-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1956

4 state decisions

2018891890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Haskell, J.

¶1In trespass for assault upon and for soliciting 'the plaintiff, a married woman, to commit adultery with the defendant, can he be permitted to show specific acts of unchastity ,by her with other men prior to the alleged assault, in mitigation of damages, and to rebut the probability of alleged force ?

¶2*405At the trial the court excluded the evidence, and the learned counsel for the defendant in the opening paragraph of their brief say: “We are aware that the ruling was in accordance with the

¶3law of half a century ago.” The court is not aware of any change in the law since that time. No statute intervenes; nor is the reason for the rule less cogent now than it always has been; whereby the rule is obsolescent, even.

¶4Evidence tending to show the plaintiff’s general reputation for unchastity was admitted. Persons seeking damages in actions of this sort must be prepared to defend their general character; but are not required to come ready to explain the various specific questionable acts of their lives, and to rebut false accusations, of which they can have no premonition. It would be a hard rule that would compel a plaintiff to defend every act of his life, as the price of justice.

¶5Exceptions overruled.

Peters, C. J., Walton, Danforth, Virgin and Emery, JJ'., concurred.
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