Case ID: mass_8/html/0234-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Inhabitants of Walpole, Plaintiffs in Error, versus The Inhabitants of West Cambridge.
    Id a complaint, and also in an adjudication for the removal of a pauper, it is required to state the cause of the likelihood of his becoming chargeable.
    It is not sufficient for the Common Pleas, upon such an adjudication, to file or record the evidence on which their judgment is founded; they must make a statement of the facts.
    The writ of error in this case was brought to reverse a judgment of the Court of Common Pleas for this county, adjudging the settlement of Nathaniel Nason, a pauper, to be in the town of Walpole., and ordering his removal thither from the town of West Cambridge, to which town the court say he was likely to become chargeable. The process was originated by a complaint of the overseers of the poor of West Cambridge to a justice of the peace for the county of Middlesex, in which they allege * generally that the said Nason, then resident in said town, was become poor, and was likely to become chargeable to that town, and that his lawful settlement was in Walpole; whereupon they pray for process, &c.—The justice having adjudged that the pauper was not likely to become chargeable to West Cambridge, and awarded costs to Walpole, the former town appealed to the Common Pleas, where it was adjudged “ that the said Nathaniel Nason is likely to become chargeable to the town of West Cambridge; that the lawful settlement of the said N. N. is in the said town of Walpole, and that he be removed thither; and that the original complainants recover their costs.”
    
      Stearns, for the plaintiffs in error,
    took several exceptions to the proceedings, the principal of which were, 1. That it was not alleged in the original complaint, nor in the final adjudication, either that Nason was actually chargeable to the town of West Cambridge, or in what manner or by what means he was likely to become chargeable. The statute of 1793, c. 59, “ providing for the relief and support, employment and removal of the poor,” &c., in the tenth section, which gives this process, provides for the removal only of “ persons actually chargeable, or who, through age or infirmity, idleness or dissoluteness, are likely to become chargeable, to the places wherein they are found, but in which they have no lawful settlement.” The complaint, as well as the adjudication, ought to set forth, either that the person in question is actually chargeable at the time of the complaint, or is likely to become so from some one or more of the causes specified in the statute. This is a summary proceeding before a justice of the peace, in which more strictness is required than in proceedings according to the course of the common law; and though the law be not in its form a penal statute, yet its provisions are very severe, often imposing grievous suffering where no crime is imputable ; and for this reason also the construction should be strict, and the proceedings closely conformed to its prescriptions.
    *2. The statute, § ll,* requires that the Court of Common Pleas, in all their adjudications, shall state the facts upon which their judgments are founded, to the end that error therein, if any, may be corrected by writ-of error in this Court. — This is wholly omitted in the adjudication before the Court. After the joining of the issue by the parties, the record proceeds — “ Whereupon, after due examination and hearing, and upon due consideration of the premises had, the court here do adjudge,” &c. It is true that to the record sent up there are attached several depositions, which, it may be presumed, were used at the hearing; but non constat that these formed the whole evidence produced, or that the court gave credit to them. However this may be, the statute is express in requiring the court to state the facts proved.
    
      Bigelow, for the defendants in error,
    insisted that the complaint and the adjudication were in the form prescribed by the statute. It may frequently be difficult to state precisely the causes of the likelihood or probability of one’s becoming chargeable to a town. Idleness may have led to dissoluteness, which may have induced infirmity, and to all these may be added old age. Neither could the legislature, by enumerating these particular causes, intend to exclude all others, which must be the construction, if one or more of these must necessarily be specified; for a man may be in health, and neither idle, dissolute, nor old, yet, by the sickness of his family, by a fire or flood destroying his property, and in many other conceivable ways, he may be likely to become chargeable. The particular causes enumerated must then be inserted merely as examples, and not with intent to enumerate all the causes for which a removal may be authorized.—Further, the forms of the complaint, and of the adjudication, as well before a justice of *the peace as in the Courts of Common Pleas, are prescribed at full length in the statute; and they have been precisely pursued in the proceedings now under the consideration of the Court. How, .hen, are they to be considered erroneous ?
    
      All the useful purposes of that provision of the statute, which requires the facts to be stated, are better fulfilled by recording the evidence at large, when it consists wholly of written documents, as was the case here. In this way the Court here, having the original evidence before them, are furnished with better means of arriving at the merits of the suit, than they could be by an abridged or condensed statement, drawn up by the Court, who, from having received the evidence as sufficient to ground their judgment upon, might insensibly give a color to the facts different from what they would wear to the eye of one examining them free from such bias.
    
      
       In the edition of the public statutes, printed by order of the General Court, m the year 1807, vol. ii. page 667, a gross mistake has occurred. After the 16tn line from the top, ending with the words, shall state, is omitted one whole line, viz., other facts, when it shall appear, by suggestion or otherwise,-
    
   By the Court.

As the statute expressly requires the Common Pleas to state the facts upon which they found their judgment, and it is very certain that they have not done it in the case before us, the judgment must be reversed. On the other point made by the counsel for the plaintiff in error, we are of opinion that a pauper is not removable, unless actually chargeable, or likely to become so, from one or other of the causes mentioned in the statute. The form of the complaint furnished in the statute is general, and must be adapted, by him who has occasion to use it, to the circumstances of the case he would exhibit.

Judgment reversed.