Bishop v. Hunt

• Decision Date: 18 January 1887
• Citation: 24 Mo.App. 373
• Parties: RICHARD T. BISHOP, Respondent, v. THEODORE HUNT, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

24 Mo.App. 373

RICHARD T. BISHOP, Respondent,

v.THEODORE HUNT, Appellant.

St. Louis Court of Appeals, Missouri.

Jan. 18, 1887.

APPEAL from the St. Louis Circuit Court, SHEPARD BARCLAY, Judge.

Reversed and remanded.

NAPTON & FROST, for the appellant.

G. A. WURDEMAN, for the respondent.

LEWIS, P. J., delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a suit on a promissory note for five hundred dollars, given in the purchase of several patent rights by the defendant from the plaintiff. The answer set up the defence that the defendant was non compos mentis when the note was given, and that the same was obtained by false and fraudulent representations of the plaintiff. The court, of its own motion, gave the following instruction to the jury:

“The court instructs you that, if you find and believe from the evidence that, on May 16, A. D., 1885, the defendant was unsound of mind to such extent as to be incapable of appreciating the character of the transaction in which the note (read in evidence) was given, then your verdict should be for the defendant, whether you also find that the plaintiff then believed him to be of sound mind, or not; but unless you find the defendant was then of unsound mind, as aforesaid, your verdict should be for the plaintiff, for the sum of $511.89.””””

The verdict and judgment were for the plaintff.

There is a discrepancy of dates repeated frequently through the record, which would be somewhat embarrassing, but for the evident fact that it results from inexcusable errors in copying. The trial occured on January 12, 1886, and yet nearly every witness is written down as testifying to what was done in March or May, 1886. The same year (1886) is given to events which were contemporaneous with the writing of a letter offered in evidence, and which bore the date “May 29, 1885.” The repeated clerical blunder is so patent, that we feel constrained to substitute the year 1885 for “1886,” wherever this may be necessary to make the record either intelligible or consistent.

Dr. T. G. Comstock, a well known physician, testified that he saw the defendant at St. Vincent's asylum for the insane, on May 29, 1885, the day on which, by advice of the witness, the defendant was committed to the asylum. That he made a thorough examination of the defendant, and found him insane on the subject of patents. From the defendant's then condition, the witness was satisfied that the insanity had existed for more than three weeks prior to that date.

William Booth, the defendant's father-in-law, testified, that for several months prior to May, 1885, the defendant had been insane on the subject of patents. That he “would buy them, talk foolishly about them, and the immense sums he expected to realize on them. The defendant wrote letters about patents, of a foolish nature, to Bismarck and the Czar of Russia.”

Fred. G. Ziebig had known the defendant from childhood. Attended to the real estate business of the defendant's mother, and had attended to the defendant's business until March, 1885, when he had ceased to do so because of the defendant's insanity and the witness's unwillingness to incur the responsibility of carrying out his instructions. Saw the defendant nearly every day up to May 29, 1885, and he was insane during the whole time, particularly on the subject of patents, from which he expected to make an extravagant fortune. The defendant, on the sixteenth day of May, 1885, was not competent to transact any business, by reason of insanity.

A letter from the plaintiff to the defendant's wife, dated May 29, 1885, was shown in evidence, in which the plaintiff says he was somewhat surprised to learn of the defendant's “sickness,” and also of his financial position. That, when he accepted the note for five hundred dollars, he believed the defendant to be in all respects responsible. That the writer had not, in any one instance, pressed or persuaded the defendant either to patent an invention, or to buy one after it was patented. That all he (the plaintiff) now asked was, to have his patent deeds returned, and he would return the note.

The only testimony offered by the plaintiff was that given by himself. The bill of exceptions recites that the plaintiff was duly sworn, “and gave evidence tending to prove that the defendant was sane and capable of contracting before and at the time of the execution of the said note; that he saw no reason to believe or suppose the defendant to be insane; that the note was signed by the defendant in payment of certain patents. They were valuable then, and now. When he heard the defendant was in the asylum, he wrote to the defendant's wife,...