Rowe v. Bowman

• Decision Date: 17 June 1903
• Citation: 67 N.E. 636,183 Mass. 488
• Parties: ROWE v. BOWMAN.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

183 Mass. 488

67 N.E. 636

ROWE v. BOWMAN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

June 17, 1903

COUNSEL

C. G. Keyes, for plaintiff.

Chas G. Chick and Danl. L. Smith, for defendant.

OPINION

LORING J.

This is an action on a promissory note signed by the defendant and one Grace Helen Meyer. The defendant offered to prove that the note in suit was given as a renewal of a former note which had been given under the following circumstances: The defendant applied to the plaintiff for a loan of $2,000 to Mrs. Meyer, 'the other maker of the note in suit, and stated to the plaintiff that, if two names were necessary on the note, he would put his name upon it and asked the plaintiff if two names were necessary, and the plaintiff said they were; that the defendant then said, 'In that case I will put my name on the note, but I am not to pay it, but the other signer is to pay it; that she was to have the money, and he was not;' that the plaintiff's reply was that he would loan the money on those terms.' This must be taken to mean that, as between the two defendants, Mrs. Meyer was to be primarily liable, and not to mean that she alone was to be liable on the note, as the defendant now contends. The facts offered constituted no defense, and were properly excluded.

The other two exceptions relate to the fact that there was no revenue stamp on the note in suit when it was delivered to the plaintiff, as required by Act June 13, 1898, c. 448, § 6, Schedule A, 30 Stat. 448, 451 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2291], and that the plaintiff subsequently affixed the proper stamp to the note, and canceled it in the defendant's name. His request was that the judge should rule, as matter of law, that this constituted a material alteration of the note, and that the note should be ruled out, as inadmissible evidence.

The second of these two exceptions is covered by the previous decisions of this court in Carpenter v. Snelling, 97 Mass. 452; Green v. Holway, 101 Mass. 243, 3 Am. Rep. 339. Under those decisions, Act June 13, 1898, c. 448, §§ 7, 14, 30 Stat. 452, 455 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, pp. 2292, 2297], forbidding unstamped instruments from being admitted in evidence, must be confined to courts of the United States.

The first of these two exceptions must also be overruled. The note was no invalid before the stamp was annexed. It was decided by this court, after great deliberation, that Act July 13, 1866, c. 184, § 9, 14 Stat. 101, declaring unstamped instruments to be invalid, applied only to instruments where the stamp had been fraudulently omitted. Green v Holway, 101 Mass. 243, 3 Am. Rep. 339; Moore v. Quirk, 105 Mass. 49, 7 Am. Rep. 499. And the Supreme Court of the United States reached the same conclusion. Campbell v. Wilcox, 10 Wall. 421, 19 L.Ed. 973. The act in question, Act June 13, 1898, c. 448, § 13 (30 Stat. 454 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2294]), so far as the question of the validity of unstamped instruments is concerned, is the same as Act July 13, 1866, c. 184, § 9; and the decision in Green v. Holway, 101 Mass. 243, 3 Am. Rep. 339,...