262 Mass. 10 | Mass. | 1928
The plaintiff is seeking to recover for services rendered the defendant as housekeeper, and for
The judge, subject to the defendant’s exception, permitted the plaintiff, in cross-examination of the defendant, to show that, in March, 1924, after he had been notified by the plaintiff’s attorney of her claim and before action was brought, he had conveyed his home to the woman who later became his wife. A certified copy of the deed was admitted in evidence. The defendant worked for wages and his only other income was the rent from one suite in the house he occupied, and $100 a year which he received from a fraternal organization. The plaintiff testified that after this conveyance, when she told the defendant that he would hear from her claim soon, he said “You are too late.”
Upon the evidence introduced, the jury could infer that the house constituted all of the defendant’s attachable property, and that it was voluntarily conveyed to avoid an attachment by the plaintiff. Portland Gas Light Co. v. Ruud, 242 Mass. 272, 275. The testimony objected to was competent. It had some tendency to show that the défendant was “conscious of liability and endeavored to escape from it.” Banfield v. Whipple, 10 Allen, 27, 31. The fact that a promise to marry is a good consideration for a conveyance is immaterial, because there was no evidence to prove that such a promise was the consideration for the conveyance.
An exception was saved to the admission of a conversation between the defendant and Mrs. Leonard, a sister of both parties. A part of this conversation — to the effect that Mrs. Leonard said that the plaintiff would bring an action against the defendant and take the house from him for wages, with his reply, “She can’t do it. The house don’t belong to me” — was competent. The jury could have found that when the defendant was thus spoken to by his sister about the plaintiff’s claim he would have denied that he owed her anything if that were true, but instead of that the ownership in some one else was stated as the reason why the house could not be taken in satisfaction of her claim. This reply
Exceptions overruled.