Case Name: Lemuel Coffin, Petitioner, versus Henry Abbot
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1811-03
Citations: 6 Tyng 252
Docket Number: 
Parties: * Lemuel Coffin, Petitioner, versus Henry Abbot.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 7
Pages: 212–213

Head Matter:
* Lemuel Coffin, Petitioner, versus Henry Abbot.
Practice. — The affidavit of a petitioner for a review may be used on the hearing of the petition, to prove facts known only to himself.
Depositions of other persons are not received on such hearing, unless taken with the usual forms, as depositions to be used in the trial of a cause.
Slight evidence is sufficient to sustain such a petition, where the petitioner has liad no trial.
This was a petition, pursuant to the statute of 1788, c. 11, for the review of an action of assumpsit, in which the petitioner had been defaulted at the Court of Common Pleas.
To prove the allegations contained in the petition, the petitioner offered his own affidavit, which was objected to by the counsel for the respondent, who insisted that such affidavit was never received, except on the first application, to obtain an order of notice to the opposite party. But the Court (absente Parsons, C. J.) overruled the objection, and admitted the affidavit to be read, so far as it went to substantiate facts, which, from their nature, could be known only to himself.
The counsel for the respondent, to show the consent of the petitioner to suffer judgment to go by default, offered the affidavits of sundry persons, which had been taken without notice to the petitioner. But the Court refused to receive them, observing that the same forms were required in this case, as in the case of taking depositions to be used in the trial, such as notice to the opposite party, &c.
[On such an application, the affidavits of others were clearly as properly admissible as the affidavit of the plaintiff. — Ed.]

Opinion:
Note. It was observed by the Court, in this case, that slight evidence, on the part of the petitioner so circumstanced, is sufficient to support the petition; although that evidence be contradicted by testimony on the part of the respondent; because the granting of the petition is not a trial of the cause, but merely a determination that the petitioner shall not be precluded from making a defence to an action brought against him.
Jackson and Hubbard for the petitioner.
The. Solicitor-General and Fuller for the respondent.
The review was granted, the costs of it to be subject to the discretion of the Court.