Am. Exch. Nat. Bank v. Segroves

• Citation: 166 N.C. 608,82 S.E. 947
• Decision Date: 30 September 1914
• Docket Number: (No. 138.)
• Parties: AMERICAN EXCH. NAT. BANK. v. SEGROVES.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of North Carolina

82 S.E. 947

(166 N.C. 608)

AMERICAN EXCH. NAT. BANK.

v.SEGROVES.

(No. 138.)

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sept. 30, 1914.

Appeal from Superior Court, Chatham County; Peebles, Judge.

Action by the American Exchange National Bank against R. R. Segroves. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. New trial.

H. A. London & Son, of Pittsboro, for appellant.

R. H. Hayes and F. W. Bynum, both of Pittsboro, for appellee.

CLARK, C. J. This is an action on a negotiable instrument under seal for $1,000 executed by defendant on January 1, 1908, payable four years after date to the National Bank of Lillington, N. C, and indorsed by said bank to the plaintiff, before maturity. The defendant in his answer denied the execution of this note, but admitted that he executed a note for that amount to the National Bank of Lillington in 1907 upon certain representations made to him by S. A. Salmon and for the accommodation of said Salmon. The defendant testified on the trial that he executed the note sued on, and over the objection of the plaintiff testified that he did so on certain representations made to him by F. M. Nelson, president of the Lillington bank. Nelson in his deposition testified that the plaintiff knew nothing of the alleged transactions or conversations between Salmon and the defendant, and that the note in suit was given in renewal of the first note.

The exception most strenuously argued is that the court charged:

"There is no evidence at all that the plaintiff paid anything of personal value for that note, If it did, it was knowledge peculiarly within his own breast, and it was his business to comehere and tell you about it. Nelson never said the bank paid anything for it. He never said the hank credited his account with the amount of that note."

In the deposition of Nelson he stated that the consideration for the transfer of this note to the plaintiff was an indebtedness of the National Bank of Lillington to the American Exchange National Bank; that at that time the Lillington bank owed the plaintiff about $5,000.

Revisal, § 2173, provides: "An antecedent or pre-existing debt constitutes value." The indebtedness of the bank of Lillington, as above testified, to the plaintiff was value or consideration for the transfer of the note in suit. Smathers v. Hotel Co., 162 N. C. 352, 78 S. E. 224, and cases there cited. It is true that there was in evidence the indorsement on the back of the note, "For collection account, American Exchange National Bank N....