Mills v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 25 November 1878
• Citation: 88 Pa. 118
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
• Parties: Mills <I>versus</I> Wilson.

88 Pa. 118

Mills versus Wilson.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

November 13, 1878.

November 25, 1878.

November 13th 1878.

Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON and TRUNKEY, JJ. WOODWARD, J., absent.

Error to the Court of Common Pleas, No. 1, of Allegheny county: Of October and November Term 1878, No. 245. T. H. Baird Patterson, for plaintiff in error.—Kansas was the locus of the contract, for the bond and mortgage were executed there, at the residence of the obligee, and the payment by the agent in this state is not legally competent to change the locus thus shown by the papers themselves: Potter v. Tallman, 35 Barb. 182; Findlay v. Hall, 12 Ohio 610. The negotiation was made here, but the transaction was closed in Kansas. The instant Wilson mailed the executed papers in Kansas the contract was closed and subject to Kansas law: Parsons on Contracts, 5th ed., 582; Jones on Mortgages 502, 508; Addison on Contracts 361; Lennig v. Ralston, 11 Harris 138.

Thomas C. Lazear, for defendant in error.—The contract, both in the making and the performance, was a Pennsylvania contract. The mortgage was of no effect until delivery. The receipt of the money and the delivery of the mortgage were contemporaneous acts by the agent of both parties and acting in Pennsylvania. The place of payment would of necessity be where the mortgage could be enforced. Only the Pennsylvania rate of interest should have been computed: Story on Conflict of Laws, sects. 291, 292; Archer v. Dunn, 2 W. & S. 327; Wood v. Kelso, 3 Casey 241; Schell v. Stetson, 34 Leg. Int. 114.

The judgment of the Supreme Court was entered November 25th 1878, PER CURIAM.

This is clearly the case of a Pennsylvania contract. The agreement for the loan was made here, and the place of payment was here, where the creditor resided. Though the bond and mortgage were sent to Kansas to be executed, they were inchoate until delivery and payment of the money here, acts necessarily simultaneous. Hastings, though the agent of both parties in effecting the loan, was the agent of Wilson in delivering the bond and mortgage and receiving the money.

We think the court was right in giving judgment for the interest at the rate allowed in Pennsylvania, and not at the Kansas rate.

Judgment affirmed.