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eBook details

• Title: Brown v. Hiatts
• Author : United States Supreme Court
• Release Date : January 01, 1872
• Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 54 KB

Description

Messrs. Conway Robinson and E. S. Brown, for Brown; Mr. A. G. Riddle, for the Hiatts. We fully concur in the conclusion of the Circuit Court that the alleged verbal agreement between the parties that the complainant should take the Perkins judgment and Kenyon note, at the election of the defendants, in satisfaction of the bond and mortgage in suit, is not proved. The existence of any agreement of the kind is positively denied by the complainant, and all the circumstances of the case show conclusively to our minds that no such agreement was ever made. In the first place the amount of both collaterals, assuming them to have been perfectly good, was, at the time the loan was made, less by several hundred dollars than the amount lent. Then the loan drew twenty per cent. interest a year while one of the collaterals bore interest only at six per cent., and the other at seven per cent. a year, so that the excess of the amount due on the loan over the amount due on the collaterals was constantly increasing. In the second place the letter which Hiatt pretends to have received from the complainant recognizing the alleged verbal agreement and accepting the election of the defendants, was not produced, and the complainant denies under oath that he ever wrote such a letter. The latter's testimony is corroborated by the fact that communication by mail, by which means Hiatt pretends to have received the letter, had long before ceased between that portion of Virginia in which the complainant resided and the loyal portion of the United States. In the third place the statements of Hiatt made to several parties at different times were inconsistent with the existence of any agreement of the kind mentioned. In 1863 he stated to the district attorney that he owed the complainant the entire amount secured by his mortgage, and this was more than a year after the pretended satisfaction of the bond and mortgage in suit. The story put forth by the defendants is contradicted by the testimony of the complainant, is intrinsically improbable, and is irreconcilable with their repeated statements to others, and with their answer to the information in the confiscation proceedings. The case well illustrates the wisdom of the rule of law and the importance of its enforcement, that parol testimony of a verbal agreement shall not be permitted to vary or contradict the terms of a written contract made at the same time. The contract here in writing shows that the Kenyon note and mortgage were assigned as collateral security. The object of the testimony was to prove that a different agreement was really made, namely, that the note should be held as such security only at the option of the defendants, and at their election could be turned over with the Perkins judgment in full payment and satisfaction of the bond and mortgage. Had an objection been taken to the admissibility of this evidence it would undoubtedly have been excluded.

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