Chase v. Elkins

• Decision Date: 01 July 1829
• Parties: JOSEPH CHASE, 2d, v. CURTIS ELKINS
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

2 Vt. 290

JOSEPH CHASE, 2d, v. CURTIS ELKINS

Supreme Court of Vermont, Essex

July, 1829

This was an action of trespass for taking and carrying away a pair of two-year-old steers. It was commenced before a justice of the peace, and was brought into the county court by appeal. Judgment was there rendered for the plaintiff on a case agreed to by the parties. The defendant excepted to the decision, and removed the cause to this Court for a revision of the judgment.--The case thus agreed on is as follows:

" Samuel Chase, father to the plaintiff, in the year 1825, was bankrupt and poor; and he ever since has been, and now is, a poor man, and unable to pay his debts. In that year, he sold to his son, the present plaintiff, his time, (he being then a minor) until he should arrive at the age of 21 years, (being about three years) for sixteen dollars a year. After this the said Joseph worked on his own account as a hired man, and received and controlled his own wages; and his father exercised no control over said Joseph, or his property. About one year before said Joseph came of age, he paid his father according to contract, out of the avails of his labour which he earned after he bought his time of his father; after which he laboured for one Thos. Johnson, Jr. of Bath, in the state of New-Hampshire, in the last year of his minority; and out of the avails of that labor said Joseph bought the steers in question. Said steers were driven to the town of Jay, in Vermont, to Samuel Chase father of said Joseph, and lent to him; who worked them and kept them until taken away by the defendant. On the 21st day of March, 1828, the defendant being a legal deputy sheriff, attached said steers on a writ duly issued, and returnable before Samuel Heath, justice of the peace, founded on a note, signed by said Samuel, and dated the 26th day of September, 1825; which writ was duly returned, judgment rendered thereon, and execution issued in due form of law, levied upon said steers, and they were sold thereon in due form of law. Now it is agreed by the parties that, if the law arising upon these facts entitles the plaintiff to recover, judgment shall be entered for $ 14,00 damages, and his costs. If otherwise, then judgment to be entered for the defendant that he recover his costs."

Affirmed.

The plaintiff's counsel argued, That the plaintiff is entitled to judgment upon these facts. The father has a right to sell or give to his minor son his time, or a right to his future earnings. He may think this to be the best for the son, and for the family. He may have no business in which to employ the son to any advantage; and it may be altogether prudent to encourage his son to be faithful and industrious, by giving him his earnings, or a portion of them. If he has not this right, and the creditor can hold this property against the plaintiff, it would virtually render the children bond-slaves to their father's creditors; and entail the poverty of the father upon the children, in all its discouraging and depressing circumstances. It is even probable, that the sixteen dollars a year, which the son paid to his father for three years, exceeded any thing he could have earned for his father in his appropriate business. And there seems no probability, that, amidst such poverty of the father, any earnings of the son for the father would ever have accumulated to an amount liable to attachments for the father's debts.

Argument for the defendant.--1st. The contract between the father and son, for the son's emancipation, was void. It was not for necessaries. It is against the policy of the law to encourage or confirm such contracts. The law does not emancipate until twenty one years. 2d. It was a fraud upon the creditors of Samuel Chase; for the father is entitled to the earnings of the son while a minor. 3d. The father had possessed himself of the property, and was using and improving it as his own at the...