Case ID: njl_3/html/0025-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

BRINLY against WURTS.
    ON CEETIOEABI.
    Pleading tavern act, merely by its date, in bar to a tavern account, sufficient in small cause court.
    The plaintiff below founded his action on a book account for $20.65, which account imported on the face of it to be for a tavern debt, except a few items. To which action the defendant below pleaded as follows: “ That I owe the plaintiff nothing, agreeable to an act of the council and general assembly of this State, passed at Trenton, February 24,1797, and I plead the said act in bar to said plaintiff’s demand.” This is the act concerning inns and taverns. On the trial of the cause, the justice overruled the plea, and refused to let [328] the act of Assembly or any evidence be given in [*] support of it, and the plaintiff recovered $13.59. The defendant below brought this certiorari, and alleges this as error. For the defendant in this court, who was the plaintiff below, it was said by his counsel, that the plea did not contain sufficient certainty; that it ought to have averred that the plaintiff below was a tavern keeper, and that the account was a tavern debt.
   But the Court said, that we could not expect such precision in the justices’ courts; that the act was substantially pleaded, and ought not to have been disregarded by the justice.

Judgment reversed.