Morrissey v. Morrissey
| Decision Date | 27 February 1902 |
| Parties | MORRISSEY v. MORRISSEY. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
E. N. Hill, for petitioner.
Thos F. Meehan, for respondent.
The case arises upon the account of an administrator, in which he claims certain sums as due to him from his intestate on the ground that they were advanced to her upon an oral agreement that in return she should convey or devise her house to him and that she failed to do as she had agreed. The items are stated in the account as money lent, which is a mistake, but nothing turns upon the error at this stage. It can be amended. After an award of arbitrators under Pub. St. c. 136 § 6, which was not confirmed, the claim was submitted to a jury by a judge of this court, on appeal from the Probate Court, under section 7. The issues were framed in the form of three questions, in answer to the first of which the jury found the agreement to have been made as above stated, and thereby established the general correctness of the plaintiff's claim. Dix v. Marcy, 116 Mass. 416, 417; Bacon v. Parker, 137 Mass. 309, 311; Miller v. Roberts, 169 Mass. 174, 47 N.E. 585. The second issue was: 'Which, if any, of the items in the claim of Thomas J. Morrissey were paid by his own money or by money lent by him to Catharine morrissey?' The jury answered 'All but the item [numbered] 4,' an item of $824. Before the verdict was rendered, when the jury came into court, they were asked with regard to this item 4 and explained that they found that of the $824, seven hundred dollars were advanced, under the agreement, between 1887 and 1889, and twenty four dollars on February 9, 1892, the date set against the item. The other one hundred dollars represented accumulations while Catharine Morrissey had the money in a savings bank and before she used it as she did on the date of the item to pay off a mortgage on her house. This one hundred dollars is not claimed. The judge thereupon, seemingly for the moment conceiving that the claim in respect of the seven hundred dollars was barred by the statute of limitations, directed the jury to find for the petitioner, except as to item 4, and for twenty-four dollars on that item, and later received and affirmed the verdict. A general verdict was returned by the jury for a definite sum of money, but this was not rendered upon any issue submitted to them, and was a mistake. The only issues were the three questions.
It appears from what we have recited from the report of the judge that the answer to the second question not only did not express the meaning of...
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