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12 Wis. 176

Downie v. White

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Decided June 15, 1860

Wisconsin Supreme Court · decided 1860-06-15

The complaint in this case was exactly similar to that in the preceding case of Downie vs. Hoover. The defendant filed an answer containing several grounds of defense. The first was a denial of the organization of the Milwaukee and Beloit E. E. Co.; the second, a denial that at the time of the pretended election of directors of said corporation, in March, 1856, there had been $50,000 of the capital stock thereof subscribed, as required by law, to authorize such election.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently October 1914

4 state decisions

20186018701880189019001910decided

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,

PAINE, J.

¶2This case presents the same question as that decided in Downie vs. Hoover, which must be here decided in the same way.

¶3In this case, however, an answer was filed and a trial had. But we do not think the secret understanding which the defendant sets up, to the effect that his subscription was to be merely colorable, nor the evidence offered showing an understanding of a similar kind with other subscribers, constitutes any defence whatever. Such agreements are an obvious fraud upon the other subscribers; and the written subscrip*179tion should be enforced, without regard to them. Brown vs. Appleby, 1 Sandf, 170; Redfield on Railways, § 48 and note 1; Blodgett vs. Morrill, 20 Vt., 509; White Mountain R. R. vs. Eastman, 34 N. H., 124.

¶4The third paragraph of the defendant’s answer is liable also to the objection, that it sets up a contemporaneous parol understanding inconsistent with the terms of the written agreement.

¶5The judgment must be reversed with costs, and the cause remanded for a new trial.

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