Case ID: mass_71/html/0051-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Daniel L. Pettee vs. Thomas J. Coggeshall.
    Where a certificate of discharge in insolvency is pleaded, and a particular act of prefetence replied by way of avoidance, evidence of previous conveyances to other persons, not specified in the replication, is admissible to show the state of the defendant’s property at the time of the alleged preference.
    Action of contract on the acceptance of a bill of exchange. Answer, a certificate of discharge in insolvency. Replication, (ordered by the court on motion of the defendant,) a payment, with intent to prefer, of Francis Williams, a preexisting creditor, within forty days of the commencement of the proceedings in insolvency.
    
      W. Brigham, for the defendant.
    
      C. I. Reed, for the plaintiff.
   At the trial, the plaintiff gave evidence tending to prove such payment; and offered certain conveyances of real estate, made by the defendant within six weeks previously, as evidence tending to show the state of his property, a.nd how much had been previously disposed of, but without any suggestion that the proceeds thereof were fraudulently applied. The defendant objected to the admission in evidence of these conveyances, (not being specified in the replication,) as irrelevant, and having no tendency to show that the payment to Williams was made with an intent to prefer him. But Dewey, J. admitted them as competent to show that the defendant had disposed of so much of his property before the payment to Williams. And the court now affirmed this ruling, and entered

Judgment on the verdict for the plaintiff.