Goyette v. Keenan

• Decision Date: 16 October 1907
• Citation: 82 N.E. 427,196 Mass. 416
• Parties: GOYETTE v. KEENAN et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

196 Mass. 416

82 N.E. 427

GOYETTE v. KEENAN et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Hampden.

October 16, 1907

COUNSEL

H. A. Buzzell and Brooks & Hamilton, for plaintiff.

J. B Carroll and W. H. McClintock, for defendants.

OPINION

SHELDON J.

1. The mortgage deed given by the defendants to the Springfield Five Cents Savings Bank in 1898 rightly was excluded. It had no material bearing upon the issue tried in this case. The plaintiff's declaration and his whole case rested upon the claim that the defendants were not seized, of the land in dispute, described in his deed as 'land formerly belonging to Henry Bliss, now or lately of one White,' and so that this land did not pass to him. It seems to have been agreed by both parties that this land was held by White at the time that the plaintiff took his deed; and the real question was whether the description in that deed included this piece of land. Manifestly the description contained in the mortgage deed given to a third party five years earlier could throw no light upon this question.

2. The exclusion of the statements made by George A. White, offered 'to show the character of his occupation of this tract in dispute, in connection with his acts of occupation,' appears at first sight to present a more difficult question. Gray v. Kelley, 190 Mass. 184, 76 N.E. 724; Holmes v. Turners Falls Lumber Co., 150 Mass. 535 547, 549, 23 N.E. 305, 6 L. R. A. 283; Flagg v Mason, 141 Mass. 64, 6 N.E. 702; Niles v. Patch, 13 Gray, 254. But White was not deceased, and his declarations could not have been admitted under Rev. Laws, c. 175, § 66. Nor was there any offer to show that these declarations were made upon the land in question, and they were not admissible upon that ground. Long v. Colton, 116 Mass. 414, 415, and cases there cited. And see, further, O'Connell v. Cox, 179 Mass. 250, 60 N.E. 580; Peck v. Clark, 142 Mass. 436, 8 N.E. 335. But the decisive reason against sustaining this exception is that there is nothing to show what the declarations offered were, and so it is impossible to say that the plaintiff was aggrieved by their exclusion. Com. v. Smith, 163 Mass. 411, 429, 40 N.E. 189; Koplan v. Boston Gaslight Co., 177 Mass. 15, 25, 58 N.E. 183; Robinson v. Old Colony St. Ry. Co., 189 Mass. 594, 597, 76 N.E. 190. It does not substantially appear, as it did in the case last cited, what answer was expected to the question which was excluded.

3. The ruling that the boundary in the plaintiff's deed, on land formerly belonging to Bliss, now or lately to one White, gave a monument which would control the distance stated in the...