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116 Ala. 639

Martin v. Smith

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1897

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1897-11-15

Tried before the Hon. J. A. Bilbro. This action was brought by the appellee, Jasper Smith, against the appellant, Joseph H. Martin, and counted upon a promissory note. The defendant filed a sworn plea of non'est factum, and on this plea issue was joined and the trial was had.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 1961

5 state decisions

2018971900191019201930194019501960decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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HEAD, J.

¶1This is another case where a party voluntarily executed a written obligation without reading *642it, being induced thereto by no false representation of its contents, and now supposes himself entitled to be relieved therefrom because the document proved to be different from what he thought. The fact that shortly before the execution of the instrument he had been fraudulently induced to sign, with a co-maker, a similar paper to same payee, taken by the same agent of the payee, who committed the fraud, in a transaction having no connection with the one under consideration, was not admissible in evidence, in the absence of any proof that the same agent made false representations concerning the instrument in question. It matters not how many other frauds may have been committed; if there was none in the transaction under review, they avail nothing. It may be conceded that if there had been proof of fraud inducing the execution of the contract, other similar frauds perpetrated by the same party, near the same time, might have been received, within proper limitations, as circumstances in aid of such proof ; but they could not be received for the purpose of making out, independently, a case of fraud in a transaction with which they had no connection. As it is unnecessary to pass upon the question, we do not decide whether such evidence is admissible at all or not, even had there been independent proof of fraud in this case.

¶2Affirmed.

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