Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

35 Me. 324

Adams v. Smith

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided July 1, 1853

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1853-07-01

On Report from Nisi Prius, Tenney, J., presiding. Assumpsit by the indorsee against the maker of a promissory note of ‡72,25, payable in fourteen months to the Protection Insurance Company of New Jersey or order, at the Augusta Bank.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““ That the note was the property of the insurance company, unpaid and negotiable, and having been transferred to the plaintiffs in the ordinary course of business, by indorsement before its maturity, they are entitled to recover the amount due upon it.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Sutton v. Beckwith

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1853-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently March 1916

6 state decisions

401853186018701880189019001910decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Hathaway, J.

¶1Assumpsit on a note, made by the defendant, payable to the Protection Insurance Company of New Jersey, or order, indorsed and transferred to the plaintiffs, by W. Earl, as agent of said company. The authority of Earl *328to transfer it was proved by the deposition of Edwards, in the case, which was competent for that purpose. 2 Greenl. Ev. <§> 62.

¶2The plaintiffs left' the note at the Mariner’s Bank for collec-tion. The indorsement of Baker, cashier, for the purpose of collecting it, can have no effect upon the rights of the parties to this suit. The printing on the back of the note, directly over the signature of W. Earl, was merely an unfilled blank, and amounted to nothing. The note, therefore came into the plaintiffs’ hands as if those printed words had not been there.

¶3The note- was the property of the Insurance Company, unpaid and negotiable, and having been transferred to the plaintiffs in the ordinary course of business by indorsement, before its maturity, they are entitled to recover the amount due upon it, and a default must be entered.

Shepley, C. J., and Wells, Howard and Rice, J. J., concurred.
/35/me/324 · .json · Public domain