Donahue v. Dougherty
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Error to the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia. i This was debt brought by Dougherty against the Reverend T. J. Donahue to recover the penalty of fifty pounds, for marrying his infant son without his consent. On the 28th April, 1831,-the plaintiff filed the following statement of his claim.
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Error to the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia. i This was debt brought by Dougherty against the Reverend T. J. Donahue to recover the penalty of fifty pounds, for marrying his infant son without his consent. On the 28th April, 1831,-the plaintiff filed the following statement of his claim. “ The defendant is a clergyman, and on the 13th day of February, 1831, at the city of Philadelphia, united in matrimony and joined in marriage, Thomas B. Dougherty, a son of the plaintiff, under the age of twenty-one years, with Ann M‘Callister, without the knowledge or consent of the…
1Opinion of the CourtGibson, C. J.
A statement in an action like the present, being, unauthorized by the act of assembly, is a nullity; consequently the court could not prevent the plaintiff from declaring as he might have done originally, and as if no attempt at legal specification of the cause of action had been made. This not only relieves us from a consideration of the questions of amendment, but disposes also of the demurrer to the statement; for though the judgment of respondent ouster was unnecessary, it did not vitiate the subsequent proceedings. Nor is the verdict bad as being founded in part on the defective…
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