How do we know? Taken from the published judgment; not rewritten by the platform.
This is a decision of Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, given 1 October 1790, from Caselaw Access Project. No later decision here cites it — that does not show it is still good law.
No later authority in this platform cites this decision. That means the platform holds no subsequent treatment — not that the decision is undisturbed.
Source
- Published by
- Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab
- Source
- Caselaw Access Project
- Licence
- Open — US judicial opinions are not copyrightable (government edicts doctrine)
- Held here since
- 26 September 2026
Version
- Decided
- 1 October 1790
- Later treatment
- Not cited by any later authority here
- Jurisdiction
- Pennsylvania
Authority
- Court
- Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas
- Citation
- 2 U.S. 77
No later authority in this platform cites this decision. That means the platform holds no subsequent treatment — not that the decision is undisturbed.
The decision
- Court
- Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas
- Decided
- 1790-10-01
Headnote
October Sessions, 1790. Sharpe versus Thatcher. THIS was a certiorari to remove the judgment given in this case by Justice Wharton. On a motion made by Serjeant to reverse the judgment, it appeared that thatcher, the present defendant, had originally sued Sharpe, the plaintiff, before Justice Coates, to recover a debt; that Sharpe offered to make a set off, for water-money, that is, a charge for Thatcher’s drawing water at his pump; but that Justice Coates refused to admit it, and gave judgment for the debt demanded. That, thereupon, Sharpe sued Thatcher before Justice Wharton; and his son was sworn, as a witness, to prove an agreement between the parties, relative to paying water money, but he declared he knew nothing about it. That Sharpe himself was then qualified to the truth of his account; and upon this evidence alone, Justice Wharton, gave judgment for the amount; though it was formally certified to him, that Justice Coates had already decided upon the same question.
Judgment
Read from a scanOCR confidence 0.648 is below 0.7. This text was read from a scan and contains transcription errors. It may be relied on for what the case decided, but must not be presented as a verbatim quotation.
¶ 1[majority — The Court,]
¶ 2The Court, in terms of great disapprobation, declared that no Justice ought to take cognizance of a cause, which had previously been decided by another Justice. But without taking that point into consideration, they said a judgment given, merely on the attestation of the party interested, could not be sustained. Judgment reversed.
AI summary
Choose who the summary is for. Every statement links to the paragraph it comes from — the summary is never the only way to read this.
Ask LawTAG
Sign in to ask your team's LawTAGs about this page.
What it relied on
No outbound citations have been extracted for this decision.
In the news
News coverage of “Sharpe v. Thatcher” in the last three months, from GDELT.