First Nat. Bank of Freehold v. Rutter

• Decision Date: 03 March 1919
• Docket Number: No. 54.,54.
• Citation: 106 A. 371
• Parties: FIRST NAT. BANK OF FREEHOLD v. RUTTER.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

106 A. 371

FIRST NAT. BANK OF FREEHOLD

v. RUTTER.

No. 54.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

March 3, 1919.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Action by the First National Bank of Freehold against Abbie M. Rutter. There was judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed (104 Atl. 138), and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Vredenburgh & Vredenburgh, of Freehold, for appellant.

John S. Applegate & Son, of Red Bank, for respondent.

PER CURIAM. In this case we are of opinion that the judgment under review should be affirmed for the reasons stated in the opinion of Mr. Justice Parker in the court below, and would add nothing to that deliverance were it not for an opinion filed in this court subsequent to the filing of the opinion in the case at bar in the Supreme Court. We refer to La Rosa v. Nichols, 105 Atl. 201. It might seem upon a cursory view that as an estoppel was worked there it should be here. Not so.

At common law a married woman could not contract; but under section 5 of the Married Woman's Act (Comp. St. p. 3226), she can, with the exceptions mentioned in the act; and they preserve to her the benefit of the disabilities under which she labored at common law. Her disability, therefore, is one at common law, like the disability of infants.

This court in the La Rosa case held that the contract of an infant for his own benefit (and he receive the benefit), induced by his fraudulent representation that he was of age when he looked as though he were, could not be defeated by him on the ground of infancy, as the doctrine of estoppel precluded him.

It is to be observed that this very statute emancipating married women from their incapacity to contract, while providing that their undertakings by way of suretyship and accommodation indorsement shall not bind them, makes an exception in cases where they obtain, directly or indirectly, any money, property, or other thing of value for their own use, or the use, benefit, or advantage of their separate estate, in which event they are made liable.

Thus it appears that in the case of married women the statute itself makes them liable in the circumstances which this court held infants liable in the La Rosa Case; that is, where they receive a benefit.