First Nat. Bank of Freehold v. Rutter

• Decision Date: 05 June 1918
• Citation: 104 A. 138
• Parties: FIRST NAT. BANK OF FREEHOLD v. RUTTER.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

104 A. 138

FIRST NAT. BANK OF FREEHOLD

v. RUTTER.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 5, 1918.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Monmouth County.

Action by the First National Bank of Freehold against Abbie M. Rutter. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Argued February term, 1918, before GUMMERE, C. J., and PARKER and KALISCH, JJ.

Vredenburgh & Vredenburgh and Samuel C. Cowart, all of Freehold, for appellant.

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

PARKER, J. Defendant is a married woman. The action is upon a promissory note signed by her and made to the order of her brother John T. McChesney, to whose credit the proceeds were placed, defendant not getting any of the money so raised. The jury found a verdict for defendant and plaintiff appeals.

The special facts of the ease are as follows: Defendant is a married woman running a little business of her own. Her brother, McChesney, wished to borrow money from the plaintiff bank, which refused to discount his note. Then he asked the bank people if they would lend on his sister's note, and they said they would. The note was drawn with defendant as maker, to the order of McChesney and indorsed by him and discounted to his account. The assistant cashier said in his testimony that he knew Mrs. Rutter was not getting the proceeds of the note at the time they were placed to McChesney's credit. The bank people, knowing the dangers of a married woman's paper, wrote on the note after the words "value received," the further words "for my own use and benefit." Mrs. Rutter swore that she saw those words, but that she received no benefit from the making of the note, that it was purely for her brother's accommodation, and that the statement on the note was false. It was a jury question on the evidence whether the bank people knew or had reason to know that she was receiving no benefit from the note.

In this condition of things the question of law raised at the trial was whether she was estopped by the statement on the note from denying that she received any benefit for the use of her separate estate. Defendant claimed that she, being disabled by law from contracting for her brother's sole benefit, could not enable herself by any false statement of fact, and, admitting that she could, plaintiff knew the actual facts, and hence no estoppel arose. The trial judge left it to the jury to say whether the bank was deceived by the words on the note or put them...