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85 Wis. 12

Brooks v. Wage

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Decided April 11, 1893

Wisconsin Supreme Court · decided 1893-04-11

Action upon a promissory note for $100, given by defendant to Henry D. Brooks, June 2,1881, and indorsed to plaintiff. The answer alleged that the note was given in consideration of the execution of a quitclaim deed by the payee of his interest in an eighty-acre tract of land, and that in fact the payee had no interest or title in the land, and that plaintiff purchased the note after due, with notice of the lack of consideration therefor.

Cited by 1 later decisions — most recently February 1897

1 state decisions

Relies on Hewett v. Currier

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1893-04-11

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Winslow, J.

¶1No fraud is claimed by the defendant to have been perpetrated on him, but he claims that the children of Brooks had no interest of any kind in the land, and that the consideration for the note thus entirely failed. We deem it unnecessary to construe the will, and shall not undertake to do so. This seems to be a case of the compromise of a doubtful claim. It appears that Brooks claimed that his children possessed a future contingent estate in the land, and that the claim was made in perfect *15good faith, based upon the terms of the will of John D. Wage. The defendant denied this claim, but he chose to compromise it and take a release, rather than await the course of events. This release was an entirely sufficient consideration for his promise to pay, and, in the absence of fraud or undue advantage, it was equally sufficient whether it should now be held that the children of Brook* really had any interest, vested or contingent, in the land or not. Hewett v. Currier, 63 Wis. 394. It follows that a verdict for the plaintiff was rightly directed.

¶2By the Court.— Judgment affirmed.

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