Clark v. Reese
California Supreme Court
Appeal from the District Court, Fifteenth Judicial District, City and County of San Francisco. This was an action for a breach of promise of marriage, with damages laid at one hundred thousand dollars.
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Appeal from the District Court, Fifteenth Judicial District, City and County of San Francisco. This was an action for a breach of promise of marriage, with damages laid at one hundred thousand dollars. The defendant’s answer consisted of a denial of the alleged promise, and a general charge of unchaste and immodest behavior on the part of plaintiff, and of specific charges of cohabitation by her with divers persons named, and among them witness B. B. Lincoln; of all which defendant alleged his ignorance until after the time of the alleged promise. Said special' matters were pleaded in bar of…
1Opinion of the Court
By the Court, Rhodes, J.:
The defendant cannot avail himself of the alleged error of the Court in compelling the witness Lincoln to answer the question propounded to him by the plaintiff’s counsel after his refusal to answer, on the ground that his reply would degrade and disgrace him. The privilege of refusing to answer is personal to the witness, and is not in any sense the privilege of the party calling him. Mr. Chief Justice Nelson, in Cloyes v. Thayer, 3 Hill, 564, says: “ If ordered to testify in a case where he is privileged, it is a matter exclusively between the Court and the witness.…
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