State v. Shevlin

• Decision Date: 02 October 1923
• Docket Number: No. 1893.,1893.
• Citation: 123 A. 233
• Parties: STATE v. SHEVLIN.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

123 A. 233

STATE

v. SHEVLIN.

No. 1893.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire Rockingham.

Oct. 2, 1923.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Rockingham County; Allen, Judge.

Conrad B. Shevlin was convicted of obtaining goods under false pretenses. Defendant's motion for directed verdict was denied, and defendant excepts. Exception sustained.

The only evidence of a fraudulent pretense consisted of certain circumstances tending to prove that the defendant did not intend to keep the promise upon which he obtained a certificate of stock.

Jeremy R. Waldron, Co. Sol., of Portsmonth, for the State.

Samuel W. Emery, of Portsmouth, for defendant.

PEASLEE, J. The defendant's motion for a directed verdict is based upon the decision in State v. King, 67 N. H. 221, 34 Atl. 461. It was there held that the defendant's concealed intent not to keep a promise as to his future action was not a false pretense within the meaning of the statute. A considerable number of authorities to that effect, both English and American, are cited to sustain the conclusion. Since that case was decided, the question has arisen in many other jurisdictions, and in nearly all of them the same result has been reached. The cases are collected in 11 R. C. L. 831.

While a different result in this jurisdiction might be sustained in view of our decisions as to fraud on the civil side of the law (Stewart v. Emerson, 52 N. H. 301; Bartlett v. Woodward-Mason, 69 N. H. 316, 41 Atl. 264), if the question were now an open one, yet, in view of the existing authority here, as well as elsewhere, the rule of stare decisis should be applied. If a change is desirable, it can easily be made by the Legislature.

Exception sustained.

All concurred.