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18 Vt. 235

Eddy v. Stafford

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided February 15, 1846

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1846-02-15

Book Account. Judgment to account was rendered in the county court, and an auditor was appointed, who reported, in substance, that the account presented by the plaintiff consisted mainly of a charge for certain personal property, which was sold by the plaintiff to the defendant, September 33,1843, for two hundred dollars, under an agreement that it was to be paid for by three promissory notes, one for fifty dollars, to be signed by the defendant and made payable in February,…

Relies on Martin v. Fuller · Scott v. Montague

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1846-02-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently February 1888

4 state decisions

2018461850186018701880decided

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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¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Redfield, J.

¶2After the decisions of this court in Martin v. Fuller, 16 Vt. 108, and Scott v. Montague, 16 Vt. 164, it is impossible to consider this a sale for payment in hand. It was, as to the one hundred dollar note, a sale upon two years’ credit, which had not expired at the time of rendering the judgment in the court below. That being the fact, the cases referred to equally settle the point, that neither indebitatus assumpsit, nor book account, can be maintained. The case, then, was correctly decided in the court below.

¶3The English decisions seem, also, fully to confirm the same view ; 1, That it is a sale upon credit; Mussen v. Price, 4 East 147; Millar v. Shaw, cited in the argument of Mussen v. Price; — 2, That the action of indebitatus assumpsit will not lie until the credit is expired, — cases cited last above ; also Dutton v. Solomonson, 3 B. & P. 582, — even where the vendee refuses to accept a bill drawn by the vendor for the price. But if the goods are to be paid for by a bill upon a third person, payable upon time, which the drawee refuses to accept, it would seem to be the doctrine of the English cases, that the vendor might sue immediately; Hickling v. Hardy, 7 Taunt. 311, [2 E. C. L. 118.] But where the contract was so fraudulent, that the vendor might have disregarded it and maintained trover, it was held, that, having sued upon it, he thereby affirmed it, and, being on time, that he could not maintain indebitatus assumpsit, until the credit had expired; Ferguson v. Carrington, 9 B. & C. 59, [17 E. C. L. 330.] But all the English cases, where the subject is named, concur in the proposition, that a special action upon the contract to give the securities stipulated may be maintained, whenever any default in that particular arises.

¶4Judgment affirmed.

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