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191 Mass. 556

Chase v. Chase

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1906-05-16

<p>Account Stated. Contract, Consideration. Equity Jurisdiction.</p> <p>To maintain an action at law upon an account stated the account must be founded on a previous relation of debtor and creditor.</p> <p>An account stated only determines the amount of a debt and cannot create a liability where none existed before.</p> <p>A promise by one of two brothers to share with the other the property left to the first by their mother is not binding without a consideration.</p> <p>Where property left to one absolutely by will can be shown by oral evidence to have been intended to be held by him one half for the benefit of another, the remedy of the beneficiary unmentioned in the will, if he has one, is in equity and not at law.</p>

Relies on Olliffe v. Wells · Dowd v. Tucker · Hooker v. Axford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1906-05-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently July 2006

1 federal appellate · 1 district · 12 state decisions

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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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Lathrop, J.

¶1We are of opinion in this case that an action at law cannot be maintained on an account stated. An account stated must be founded on previous transactions of a monetary character creating the relation of debtor and creditor. Lubbock v. Tribe, 3 M. & W. 607. Mellon v. Campbell, 11 Penn. St. 415. It cannot be made the instrument to create a liability where none before existed, but only determines the amount of a debt where liability exists. Austin v. Wilson, 33 N. Y. St. Rep. 503.

¶2On the facts found by the auditor, there was no legal liability existing on the part of the defendant’s testator towards the plaintiff, on May 31, 1895, after the death of the mother; and the alleged promise of the defendant’s testator to share equally with the plaintiff the proceeds of the mother’s estate was without consideration and void.

¶3If the property left by the will of the mother to the defendant’s testator absolutely can be shown by oral evidence to have been intended one half for the plaintiff, his remedy is in equity and not at law. Olliffe v. Wells, 130 Mass. 221. Dowd v. Tucker, 41 Conn. 197. Hooker v. Axford, 33 Mich. 453. Gilpatrick v. Glidden, 81 Maine, 137.

¶4 _Exceptions overruled.

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