Wheeler v. Johnson

Decided September 15, 1867

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1867-09-15

Contract upon a promissory note payable to Henry Dewey or bearer. At the trial in the superior court, before Brigham, J., the plaintiff produced the note in evidence and rested, the making of it being admitted by the defendant.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1867-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently September 1906

4 state decisions

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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Foster, J.

¶1The maker of a note payable to bearer cannot defeat an action thereon brought in the name of one who had possession of the note at the commencement of the suit and has continued to hold it ever since, by showing that a third party was the real owner of the note, when it appears that such third party has never objected to the possession of the plaintiff and the suit brought by him, but has expressly consented to and ratified such possession and the prosecution of the action. Beekman v. Wilson, 9 Met. 436.

¶2The application of this principle to the facts of the present case shows that the exceptions must be overruled.