Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

99 Mass. 552

Smith v. Holcomb

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 15, 1868

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1868-09-15

Tort for assault and battery by blows on the plaintiff’s head. Writ dated February 23, 1867.

Relies on Whitney v. Whitman

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1868-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 26 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 1972 · most notably Lake Shore Ry Co v. Prentice (1893), District of Columbia v. Woodbury (1890)

1 federal appellate · 21 state decisions

60186818701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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 →

Chapman, C. J.

¶1The language of the award does not import that the arbitrators have come to any conclusion in respect to damages; but that they are unable to do so by reason of disagreement among themselves. They are only able to agree that each party pay “ his own arbitrators ” the sum stated for their services. It is quite unlike the award in Stickles v. Arnold, 1 Gray, 418, and the awards in the other cases there referred to. The arbitrators have not decided the principal matter which was submitted to them, and such an award is no bar to this action. Houston v. Pollard, 9 Met. 164. Fletcher v. Webster, 5 Allen, 566. Estes v. Mansfield, 6 Allen, 69.

¶2The insult and indignity inflicted upon a person by giving him a blow with anger, rudeness or insolence, occasion menta, suffering. In many cases they constitute the principal element *555of damage. They ought to be regarded as an aggravation of the tort, on the same ground that insult and indignity, offered by the plaintiff to the defendant, which provoked the assault, may be given in evidence in mitigation of the damage. Even where there is no insult or indignity, mental suffering may be a ground of damage, in an action of tort for an injury to the person. Canning v. Williamstown, 1 Cush. 451.

¶3The amendment to the writ ought to have been delivered to the jury with the writ; and, if it was left behind by mistake, it was proper to send it to them. It was not like sending them a letter, as in Sargent v. Roberts, 1 Pick. 337; or a paper which they ought not to have, as in Whitney v. Whitman, 5 Mass. 405, and Alger v. Thompson, 1 Allen, 453. It happens not unfrequently that some paper belonging to the case is accidentally left behind when the jury retire, and to send it to them without remark cannot be regarded as a communication which must be made in the court room. Exceptions overruled.

/99/mass/552 · .json · Public domain