Corby v. Bean

• Citation: 44 Mo. 379
• Parties: JOHN CORBY and ABBE M. SAXTON, Respondents, v. HENRY R. BEAN, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 31 August 1869
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Missouri

44 Mo. 379

JOHN CORBY and ABBE M. SAXTON, Respondents,

v.HENRY R. BEAN, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

August Term, 1869.

Appeal from Fifth District Court.

Strong & Chandler, for appellant.

I. This suit can not be maintained in a court of equity. Equity will not assist a lender of money to enforce a usurious contract. (1 Sto. Eq. 301-2, § 64, e; 4 Johns. Ch. 122.)

II. Plaintiffs must concede the usury in their petition, and offer to abate usury, and ask to correct and enforce the contract as to the remainder.

Bassett & Van Waters, and Woodson, Vinyard & Young, for respondents.

The petition asking no prayer for money, but only the correction of the deed, the new matter set up in the answer constituted no defense, and should properly have been stricken out.

WAGNER, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

Plaintiff filed his petition in the Buchanan Court of Common Pleas, the object and nature of which was to correct and reform a mistake in a deed of trust made for his benefit.

The defendant filed his answer denying the alleged mistake, and, for a further defense, set up that the deed was executed and given to secure the payment of a sum of money loaned the defendant by the plaintiff; that the plaintiff charged the defendant twenty-five per cent. per annum for the use of the money, and embodied that amount of usurious interest in the note, and therefore asked that the petition be dismissed. On the hearing in the court below, the mistake in the description of the property inserted in the deed of trust was clearly proved.

It was also shown by plaintiff's own witness, who negotiated the loan and secured the deed of trust, that the actual amount that the defendant received from the plaintiff was $1,600, and that he gave his note therefor for $2,000, the $400 being charged as interest for the use of the money for one year, after which the note was to bear ten per cent. Upon this evidence the court decreed the reformation of the deed, but gave no relief to the defendant. Error being brought to the District Court, the decree was affirmed, and an appeal taken here.

The doctrine laid down in the books is that, as usurious contracts are void, courts of equity will not assist the lender when he comes into court asking relief; and that, when he seeks to enforce the contract, the court will refuse all assistance and repudiate the contract.

But our statute does not make usurious contracts utterly void: it declares that where a higher rate of interest has been contracted for than the law sanctions and allows, the court shall render judgment for the sum of money actually lent, and interest thereon at the rate of ten per cent. per annum, upon which judgment the court shall cause an order to be made setting apart the whole...