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THE ADJUDICATIONS OF ALL THE COURTS OF THE STATE,

PRESENTED IN THE REPORTS BY

ABBOTT, ANTHON, BARBOUR, BOSWORTH, BRADFORD, CAINES, CLARKE, COLEMAN,
COMSTOCK, COWEN, DENIO, DUER, EDWARDS, HALL, HILL, HILTON, HOFFMAN,
HOPKINS, HOWARD, JOHNSON, KERNAN, PAIGE, PARKER, SANDFORD,
SELDEN, E. D. SMITH, E. P. SMITH, AND WENDELL;

AND

IN THE CHANCERY SENTINEL, THE CITY Hall Recorder, the Code Reports and Reporter, HILL & DENIO'S
SUPPLEMENT, HOWARD'S COURT OF APPEALS CASES, LIVINGSTON'S JUDICIAL OPINIONS,
THE NEW YORK LEGAL OBSERVER, WHEELER'S CRIMINAL CASES, ETO.

TOGETHER WITH

THE STATUTES,

As embodied in the Revised Laws of 1818, the Revised Statutes, and the general Acts passed since 1829.

PRECEDED BY

A TABLE OF CASES CRITICISED.

THIRD EDITION: REVISED AND CORRECTED.

VOL. I.

NEW YORK:

JOHN S. VOORHIES, LAW BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER.

1864.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty

By BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT and AUSTIN ABBOTT,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, By BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT and AUSTIN ABBOTT,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

APR 1 1842

RENNIE, SHEA & LINDSAY,
STEREOTYPERS AND ELECTROTYPERS,
81, 83, and 85 Centre-street,
NEW YORK.

BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, Tribune Building, cor. Spruce & Nassau streets,

NEW YORK.

PREFACE.

THE library of the jurisprudence of New York has now become very voluminous. It is comprised in some fifty volumes of statutes (excluding the colonial laws, all private compilations, and even the early session-laws, now substantially superseded by authorized revisions), and in upwards of two hundred volumes of Reports, properly so called (in addition to many reports of cases scattered through legal periodicals). In the present Digest, we endeavor to give, under a convenient alphabetical arrangement, and balancing accuracy with brevity, the gist of these statutes and reports.

The chief utility of a digest must lie in the systematic presentation of the reported cases; and to this object digests have generally been confined. In respect to the reports, our aim has been to collect all the reported decisions of all the courts of the State. The work embraces not only all the standard reports issued by official authority, but also all the unofficial series, the Practice Reports, &c., and also such New York cases as could be gleaned from legal periodicals and other accessible sources. It comprises all the departments of jurisprudence-the common-law decisions, both civil and criminal, decisions in equity, the practice cases, adjudications of the surrogate.

It has been no part of our plan to omit cases from the belief that they were rendered obsolete by subsequent changes of the law. We have desired to present the history of the law, as well as its present state. In the department of practice, for instance, the cases on the former practice, both at law and in equity, are given as numerously if not as fully as they would have been had no Code of Procedure ever been passed. And in general, we have considered every point ruled, which in its day possessed authority and importance, as worthy to be indicated under its appropriate title; anticipating that it might aid in developing the meaning of later cases or enactments, even if it could no longer serve by any vitality of its own.

A very cursory examination of the body of the work, will satisfy the reader that it is no mere compilation of the marginal notes of reporters. Our plan has been to give an original abridgment of each case, based on a careful examination of the decision and statement of facts; an abridgment giving not only the decision of the court, but also, where practicable, a lucid indication at least of the reasoning upon which it was founded. As far as the duty of brevity would permit, we have employed the language of the court. And in instances where the language of this Digest and that of the reporter's marginal note is seen to correspond, it is usually because he has preceded us in quoting from the opinion itself.

We give in general some particulars additional to those usually furnished in a digest.

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