While most experienced genealogists are familiar with the value of original court records, few are aware of the value of published case reports. Court records contain much valuable genealogical information but they are often not readily accessible, they are usually unindexed, the case files may be incomplete, or, worst of all, they may not have been preserved for a particular county or jurisdiction.
Published law reports can help fill this void. Like most records used by genealogists, they were originally created for other purposes but can be made to yield their genealogical information to the dedicated researcher.
The main benefits of using published records is that they are completely indexed and readily available. The principle drawback is that the presentation of facts is often very brief as it takes second place to the presentation of legal principles. So, the community (or sometimes even the county) of residence of the parties may not be specified. It should also be noted that the cases reported represent only a small sample of the total actually litigated; only those decisions that raise significant legal issues will be published.
This article will attempt to de-mystify published legal case reports for genealogists and, at the same time, present a sample of interesting cases from across Nova Scotia. The most useful cases are intra-family disputes and the settling of contested estates.
The main source of interest to researchers will be the Nova Scotia Reports (abbreviated N.S.R.). These were first published in sixty volumes from 1834 until 1929 and again starting in 1965 to the present day. For the interm period, Nova Scotia cases were primarily reported in the Maritime Provinces Reports (M.P.R.). For the period 1906 to 1914, this coverage is supplemented by the Eastern Law Reports (E.L.R.) which also reported New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island cases.
It should be noted that similar report series exist for New Brunswick (1825 to 1929 and 1969-), Ontario, and elsewhere in Canada and the United States. It has been my experience that the older (esp. pre-1900) reports are richer in genealogically relevant detail than more recent examples.
Cases are generally identified by the names of the parties and the year. The citation is given in the form vol. report page; so the report of McDonald v. McKinnon (1865), 5 N.S.R. 527 will be found in volume 5 of the Nova Scotia Reports at page 527. Each volume is indexed individually.
Hubley v. Hubley (1908), 4 E.L.R. 392
Kearney v. Kearney (1876), 10 N.S.R. 428