¶1As to any articles that were attached by the defendant, and not returned upon the dissolution of the attachment, the jury were rightly instructed that the defendant would be liable for their value in this action. As to any other articles that went into the possession of the defendant with the boat, he was a mere gratuitous bailee thereof. His possession of them was not tortious, as it resulted incidentally from the attachment of the boat. It was from the plaintiff’s own choice or neglect that they were left with the boat in the hands of the officer. He can hold the officer, therefore, to no higher degree of responsibility and to no other responsibility than that of a bailee without hire. As we understand the instructions of the court below, they were adapted to this view of the plaintiff’s rights, and properly presented the principles of law applicable to the facts. If the plaintiff has suffered any grievance, it was at the hands of the jury, and not of the court. Exceptions overruled.
99 Mass. 50
Briggs v. Dearborn
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Decided January 15, 1868
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1868-01-15
Tort for conversion of an anchor, a jib-sheet, some trucks, fishing lines and leads, and some iron dross used as ballast of a sailboat, all as enumerated in a schedule annexed to the declaration.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1868-01-15
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 1953
4 state decisions
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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