Citation Numbers: 1 Pa. 431
Judges: Burnside
Filed Date: 9/15/1845
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 2/17/2022
The opinion of the court was delivered by
It was not the object of the act of 1729 — 1730, (1 Smith’s Laws, 180,) to make compensation to the injured parents, but to punish and deter all ministers and magistrates from performing the ceremony of marriage where one of the parties is an infant, and the attempt clandestine. Fifty pounds to the lacerated feelings of a parent would be no compensation. The object of the penalty was to prevent the performance of the ceremony, 14 Serg. & Rawle, 288, 289.
The penalty is given “ to the person or persons grieved,” but the grievance to be redressed is not necessarily an actual and specific damage, it being sufficient that the marriage is an unjustifiable interference with the relation existing between the parent and his offspring, and in that respect a grievance in contemplation of law. 5 Rawle, 157. The record shows that the child lived with her mother. Having property in her own right, she had a guardian who paid her mother for her boarding. It is contended that, as the infant had a guardian, he ought to have brought the action for the penalty, and that the guardian only could sustain the action for the penalty. The surviving mother is a parent within the statute. The defendant became subject to the penalty, unless he had first produced to him “ a certificate of the consent of the parent or parents, guardian or guardians, master or mistress of the minor. In a case like the one now under consideration there can be no question but the mother, who was the surviving parent, could bring
The judgment is reversed, and judgment for the plaintiff on the verdict.