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70 N.Y. 385

Alexander v. . Dutcher

New York Court of Appeals

Decided September 18, 1877

New York Court of Appeals · decided 1877-09-18

(Reported below, 7 Hun, 439.) This action was brought by plaintiff as executrix of Andrew Alexander, deceased, upon a promissory note against defendant, Philip Butcher, Jr., as maker, and the other defendants as indorsers. Said defendant, Philip Butcher, Jr., answered separately, pleading usury and payment; the other defendants answered, jointly, setting up the same defenses.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1877-09-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1916

5 state decisions

2018771880189019001910decided

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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Rapallo, J.

¶1 I can find no provision, excepting a case like the present, from the operation of section 399 of the Code. That section prohibits all parties to .actions from testifying to personal transactions with a deceased person against his executors, etc., and makes no distinction between cases where parties are called as witnesses on their own behalf, or in behalf of a co-defendant, or cases where they • are jointly or severally liable. It might have been reasonable to make such distinctions, but we have no authority thus to supplement the act, which is clear and positive in its terms.

¶2 The act of 1832 cannot aid the case. It has been superseded by sections 120 and 397 of the Code.

¶3 There was no evidence on which the' issue of payment could properly have been submitted to the jury.

¶4 The judgment should be affirmed.

¶5 All concur.

¶6 Judgment affirmed.

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