Case ID: super-ct-jud_1/html/0036-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Wrentham Proprietors vers. Metcalf. ()
    Proprietors of common and undivided Lands are incompetent Witnesses in a Suit where the Corporation is a Party.
    IT was moved that some of the Proprietors should be admitted Witnesses in this Case, who were not of the Committee who brought this Suit. 2 Lev. 231, was cited, where Scroggs, Ch. 
      
      Just., says, “that it ought not to be a general Rule “that Members of Corporations shall be admitted “or denied to be Witnesses in Actions for or against “their Corporations: But every Case Hands upon “its own particular Circumstances, viz., whether “the Interest be so considerable as by Presumption “to produce Partiality or not.”
    1763.
    In this Case at Bar it was objected that they were liable to Costs, and might each Member be taken for the Whole. A Guardian not admitted in Evidence in Favour of his Charge.
    
      
      
         Quœre of this Case. Theory of Evid. 105, 106, and 2 Lilly’s Abr. 702. 1 Str. 575, 1069. Vid. 2 Lev. 236. 2 Sid. 109. 1 Vern. 154. 2 Vern. 317. Vid. Cun. Law Dict’y, Will.
    
    
      
      (1) This was an action of ejectment, originally brought in the Inferior Court against Joshua Daniels, who suggested that he held the premises by deed of bargain and sale with warranty from Jonathan Metcalf, whom he prayed might be vouched in to defend the suit, and who was subsequently admitted for that purpose. In the Superior Court the case was entitled as above.
    
   Ruled, that they be not admitted in this Case. Ch. Just. doubted whether in any Case, where the Interest was ever so small, if they were direct Plaintiffs they should be admitted. () 
      
      (2) The general rule seems to have been that only members of public or municipal, religious, and charitable corporations were competent witnesses in suits where the corporation was a party or interested. 1 Greenl. Evid. §§ 331, 333. The St. of 1792, c. 32, provided for the admissibility of members of any “town, district, precinct, parish or other religious incorporate society.” Counties, school districts and mutual insurance companies were afterward added to the lift. Rev. Sts. c. 94, § 54. St. 1850, c. 34. By the practice acts of 1851 and 1852, all incompetency from interest was removed, except in case of parties to suits; and finally, by Sts. 1856, c. 188, and 1857, c. 305, parties themselves have been admitted. Gen. Sts. c. 131, §§ 13, 14.