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19 Ill. 141

Curtis v. Gorman

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided December 15, 1857

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1857-12-15

CLAIR. This was an action of assumpsit. The first count alleges, that on the 3rd of January, 1855, J. C. Foster made a note for two hundred dollars, payable to Gorman twelve months after date; that Gorman then indorsed and delivered said note to Joseph Barnes, and Joseph Barnes, on the 22nd day of March, 1855, indorsed and delivered said note to plaintiff; that Foster was wholly insolvent when note became due, whereby defendant became liable to pay it, etc., and undertook,…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1857-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently December 1894

3 state decisions

2018571860187018801890decided

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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Skinner, J.

¶1The plaintiffs declared in assumpsit upon a promissory note executed by the defendant to the plaintiffs, and also upon an assignment of a promissory note executed by the defendant to the plaintiffs, made by one Poster to the defendant.

¶2Plea, non assumpsit.

¶3The evidence showed that the plaintiffs commenced suit in due time upon the assigned note against the maker, and that such suit, by arrangement between the. maker and the plaintiffs, the assignees of the note, was dismissed, but to which arrangement the defendant, the assignor, was not a party, and that the note, by due diligence, could have been collected of the maker. From the evidence in support of the counts upon the note executed by the defendant to the plaintiffs, it appeared that the defendant, with said Foster as his security, made their joint and several promissory note payable to the plaintiffs, intended to be in settlement of the note executed by Foster to the defendant, and which he had assigned to the plaintiffs, and left the same with one Griffin, to be delivered to the plaintiffs, in settlement of the assigned note; that the agent of the plaintiffs refused to accept the note so. left with Griffin, and that the defendant, being informed of the refusal, took the note from Griffin’s custody and destroyed it.

¶4The note being left with Griffin as a mere depositary, having no power to act for the plaintiffs, could not take effect as a binding contract or promise without the consent or acceptance, express or implied, of the plaintiffs; and their consent and acceptance being rebutted by the evidence, no action could be maintained upon the instrument.

¶5The plaintiffs, under the evidence, were not entitled to recover.

¶6Judgment affirmed.

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