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12 Barb. 685

Silvernail v. Cole

New York Supreme Court

Decided September 14, 1852

New York Supreme Court · decided 1852-09-14

This was an appeal by the defendant from a judgment of the Broome county court. The cause originated in a justice’s court; where the plaintiff declared upon a note or agreement, dated Dec. 6, 1850, executed by the defendant, by which he promised to pay to the order of the plaintiff, sixty days after date, fifty dollars, in shook staves at ten dollars a thousand.

Relies on Pierrepont v. Barnard

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1852-09-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently October 1883

5 state decisions

301852186018701880decided

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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¶1By the Court,

Shankland, J.

¶2The legal proposition involved in the decision of this case is whether an executory promise to pay a sum of money to be recanted from a bargain which is void by the statute of frauds, is binding. The very statement of the case indicates the answer. It is not binding because there is no consideration to support it.

¶3The contract for the sale of the timber growing on the defendant’s land, being by parol, was void. (1 Denio, 550. 5 Barb. 364.) Promising to pay money to be released from such a contract, is entirely without consideration, and the promise *687can not be enforced. For this reason the justice’s judgment was legally right. The case of North v. Forest, (15 Conn. R. 400,) is to the point.

[Cortland General Term,September 14, 1852.

¶4Whether there was fraud in obtaining the note is not so clear, nor is it material to decide. The judgment of the county court must be reversed, and that of the justice affirmed.

¶5Mason, ShanTcland, Gray and Crippen, Justices.]

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