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9 Wend. 425

Robinson v. Clandall

New York Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1832

New York Supreme Court · decided 1832-10-15

This was an action of assumpsit, tried at the Allegany circuit in October, 1829, before the Hon. Addison Gardiner, one of the circuit judges. The plaintiffs declared as the hearers of two promissory notes for about SI97, made by the defendants, bearing date in 1826, payable to Hosea Wetherly or hearer, and proved the signatures of the defendants.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1832-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1940

7 state decisions

30183218401850186018701880189019001910192019301940decided

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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¶1*426By the Court,

Sutherland, J.

¶2The motion for a new trial must be denied. The jury have found that the plaintiffs came honestly by the notes on which the suit is brought; that they were not obtained by them fraudulently. That question was distinctly submitted to them by the judge, and they were charged to find for the defendants, if they believed the plaintiffs obtained the possession of the notes fraudulently.

¶3The notes being payable to bearer, and the"payee having died in Pennsylvania, admitting the plaintiffs to have been his administrators there, and in that manner to have obtained the possession of the notes, I sec no legal objection to their maintaining an action upon them in their own names as bearers. As administrators they could not sue here. Letters testamentary, or of administration granted abroad, give no authority to sue here ; we take no notice of them. 1 Johns. Ch. R. 156. 6 id. 353. 7 Cowen, 68, and cases there cited. But being the real owners of the notes, they had a right to declare as bearers and recover in that character. A mere agent, having a note of his principal, payable to bearer, may sue on it in his own name, and it does not lie with the defendant to object the plaintiff’s want of interest. 7 Cowen, 174, and cases there cited. It was not pretended in this case, that the defendants had any set-off or other defence as against the payee.

¶4Motion for new trial denied.

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