Case ID: mass_119/html/0473-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Alanson Folsom vs. William H. Clemence.
    Middlesex.
    January 12. —13, 1876.
    Colt & Endicott, JJ., absent.
    After judgment for the conversion of certain chattels, an action cannot be maintained for the conversion of other chattels taken by the same act, but accidentally omitted in the former action.
    Tort for the conversion of certain furniture and store fixtures. Writ dated September 20, 1873.
    At the trial in the Superior Court, before Pitman, J., without a jury, it was admitted that the alleged conversion was at the same time and by the same act as that of the stock in trade in the same store, for which the plaintiff had recovered judgment against the defendant in a former action, reported 111 Mass. 273.
    The plaintiff offered to prove the same title and facts as in the former action; that the property which was the subject of the present action was not included in the former one, through the accidental omission of the plaintiff’s attorney, the mistake not being discovered until after judgment; and that, before the payment of the judgment therein, the plaintiff notified the defendant of the omission, and demanded payment for the property omitted. This evidence the judge excluded, and ruled that the plaintiff had but a single cause of action for the taking of all the property, and that the prior action and judgment had exhausted his remedy, and upon this ground gave judgment for the defendant. The plaintiff alleged exceptions.
    
      R. B. Caverly, for the plaintiff.
    
      A. F. Jewett, for the defendant.
   By the Court.

The taking by one act of several chattels of the same person will not sustain more than one action. The judgment in the first action is a bar to this. Marble v. Keyes, 9 Gray, 221. Bennett v. Hood, 1 Allen, 47. Trask v. Hartford & New Haven Railroad, 2 Allen, 331.

Exceptions overruled.