Case Name: Patrick Carrigg vs. William N. Oaks
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1872-09
Citations: 110 Mass. 144
Docket Number: 
Parties: Patrick Carrigg vs. William N. Oaks.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 110
Pages: 144–144

Head Matter:
Patrick Carrigg vs. William N. Oaks.
In an action by a servant against his master for unlawfully discharging him from his service, the plaintiff testified that in a conversation between the parties the defendant discharged him, and the defendant testified that in this conversation he did not discharge him. Held, that evidence that the defendant, after the conversation, gave his wife instructions as to what he wanted the plaintiff to do that day, which were never communicated to the plaintiff, was inadmissible to corroborate the defendant’s testimony.
Contract. The declaration alleged that the defendant hired the plaintiff to work in his garden for six months, and wrongfully discharged him before that term had expired.
At the trial in the Superior Court, before Putnam, J., the plaintiff testified that on a day before the end of the six months he had a conversation with the defendant, in which the defendant told him to work that day for another man; that the plaintiff refused; and that the defendant then discharged him. The defendant denied that in this conversation he discharged the plaintiff, and, to corroborate his testimony, offered to prove by his wife that, after the conversation, but on the morning of the same day, he left an order with her, telling her what he wanted the plaintiff to do in the garden on that day; but it was conceded that this order was never comniunicated to the plaintiff. The plaintiff objected to the admission of this evidence, and the judge excluded it.
The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, and the defendant alleged exceptions.
E. Puller, for the defendant.
M. P. Knowlton, QQ-. M. Stearns with him,) for the plaintiff.

Opinion:
Colt, J.
The exceptions disclose only so much of the evidence as was deemed necessary to present the point. The parties differed as to what was said by the defendant at the time of the alleged discharge of the plaintiff from his employment. Each gave a different version of the conversation. But the defendant could not be permitted, for the purpose of corroborating his own or contradicting the plaintiff's version, to introduce his own subsequent declarations to his wife, made when the plaintiff was not present. It was incompetent evidence. Lucas v. Trumbull, 15 Gray, 806. Exceptions overruled.