Parker v. Lancaster

• Decision Date: 02 June 1892
• Citation: 24 A. 952,84 Me. 512
• Parties: PARKER v. LANCASTER et al.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

24 A. 952

84 Me. 512

PARKER

v. LANCASTER et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

June 2, 1892.

(Official.)

Appeal from supreme Judicial court, Waldo county.

Assumpsit by Christina R. Parker against Humphrey N. Lancaster and another to recover money paid by plaintiff, as executrix, to settle a claim against the estate of her deceased husband. Verdict for plaintiff. On motion for a new trial. Motion sustained.

R. W. Rogers, for plaintiff.

W. B. Fogler and J. S. Barriman, for defendants.

WALTON, J. This is an action to recover back money paid by the plaintiff, as executrix, to settle a claim against the estate of her deceased husband. She has obtained a verdict for$155, and interest from the date of her writ, and the only question is whether the verdict is not so clearly wrong as to require the court to set it aside. We think it is.

It is a settled rule of law that money voluntarily paid cannot be recovered back. Money obtained by fraud, or duress, or under such circumstances of oppression, actual or threatened, as renders it unconscionable for the one receiving it to retain it, may be recovered back. But when one demands money under a claim of right, and uses no other means to obtain it than importunity and persistency, or a threat, expressed or implied, of resort to litigation to obtain it if it is not voluntarily paid, and the one of whom the money is demanded has time for consideration and deliberation, and to obtain the advice of counsel or friends, and the money is then voluntarily paid to settle the demand, it cannot be recovered back, though the demand is illegal and unjust. The reason of the rule is obvious. If a claim is to be litigated at all, it ought to be litigated promptly. By delay, the recollection of witnesses is liable to become indistinct, and documentary evidence is liable to become lost or destroyed, and witnesses are liable to die. And on many accounts it may be important to the claimant to have the validity of his claim determined promptly and without delay; and if the other party should be allowed to pay a claim first, and then litigate it afterwards, it would give him the power to select his own time for the litigation; and, by delaying it, to place his adversary at a great disadvantage. Hence, the rule that while compulsory payments, if illegal and unjust, may be recovered back, voluntary payments cannot be. The law favors the compromise of doubtful claims, and does not allow settlements arrived at by mutual concessions to be lightly set aside. As said in Barlow v. Insurance Co., 4 Metc. (Mass.) 270, "to disturb such settlements, instead of promoting the ends of justice, would enlarge the field of discord, and raise new obstacles to compromises, and be a just cause of regret." A lawyer can render no more valuable service to his client, and none for which he should be better paid, than when, by his efforts, ho succeeds in procuring the settlement of a controversy without litigation.

In Rawson v. Porter, 9 Greenl. 119, a suit was compromised before entry in court, and the plaintiff's attorney taxed, as part of his costs, a commission of 2 1/2 per cent. on the debt. The attorney had no legal right to charge such a commission to the debtor, and the court so held; and it appeared that the reasonableness of the charge was much discussed between the attorney and the debtor, the former affirming it, and the latter denying it. But the debtor was anxious to obtain a release of the attachment of his property, and, although at first refusing, he finally paid the amount claimed, including the 2 1/2 per cent. commission, and afterwards commenced the action to recover back the amount of the commission. But the court held that the action was not maintainable; that there was no such fraud, imposition, deceit, compulsion, oppression, or extortion as would justify him in repudiating the compromise, and enable him to recover back the money which he had thus voluntarily paid.

In Smith v. Read field, 27 Me. 145, the rule is stated to be that when money is claimed as rightfully due, and is voluntarily paid, it cannot be recovered back; and in Gooding v. Morgan, 37 Me. 419, Chief Justice Shepley stated the rule as follows: "The law is regarded as settled in this state, if one with full knowledge of all the facts, or with the means of knowledge, voluntarily pays money, under a claim of right, that ho cannot recover it back. "In Fellows v. School Dist., 39 Me. 559, Mr. Justice Rice stated the rule to be that," where money is claimed as rightfully due and is paid voluntarily, and with a full knowledge of all the facts in the ease, it cannot be recovered back, if the party to whom it has been paid may conscientiously retain it."

As definitions, perhaps neither of these statements is entirely accurate. It seems to us that it would be a nearer approach to a correct statement of the rule to say that when both parties possess equal knowledge of the facts, or possess equal means of obtaining such knowledge, and one...