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180 Mass. 43

Goding v. Roscenthal

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided October 18, 1901

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1901-10-18

<p>Bankruptcy, Contingent claims. Surety. Contract, Implied.</p> <p>In an action to recover money paid by the plaintiff as surety on the defendant’s bond given in another suit to dissolve an attachment, the defence relied upon was the defendant’s discharge in bankruptcy. The plaintiff signed the bond on March 29,1898. His payment as surety was on J une 12,1900. The defendant’s petition in bankruptcy was filed on February 13, 1900, and on April 10, 1900, he received his discharge. Held, that the debt due the plaintiff was contingent upon a breach of the bond and his payment as surety, which did not occur until after the defendant’s discharge. Therefore at the time of the adjudication of bankruptcy the plaintiff’s claim was a contingent one and as such not provable under the bankruptcy act of 1898, and so not discharged.</p> <p>The assumption in Morgan v. Wordell, 178 Mass. 350, that the Supreme Court of the United States would decide, that under the bankruptcy act of 1898 claims contingent at the time of the adjudication of bankruptcy cannot be proved, was followed in this case.</p>

Relies on Morgan v. Wordell

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1901-10-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently September 1943

1 district · 5 state decisions

3019011910192019301940decided

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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Barker, J.

¶1By the execution of the bond of March 29,1898, to Aug, in which the present plaintiff was a surety for the present defendant, the latter incurred an obligation to the present plaintiff to reimburse him any amount which he might be compelled as surety to pay upon the bond. This obligation was in force when on February 13, 1900, the present defendant’s petition in bankruptcy was filed. It was an obligation founded upon an implied contract, and it was evidenced by an instrument in writing, and in one sense it was a fixed liability. But •no debt was absolutely owing at the time of the,petition. The obligation was contingent upon the happening of a breach of the bond and a payment by the surety. The payment by the surety was not until June 12, 1900, and there seems to have been no breach of the bond before that date. Therefore neither the obligee in the bond nor the surety could prove in the bankruptcy proceedings a claim founded upon the bond unless merely contingent claims are provable under the bankruptcy act of 1898. The ultimate decision of that question is yet to be made by the Supreme Court of the United States. But in Morgan v. Wordell, 178 Mass. 350, this court assumed that such claims, were not provable under the act, and we follow that view in the present case.

¶2 Exceptions sustained.

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