Stauffer v. Young

• Decision Date: 05 June 1861
• Citation: 39 Pa. 455
• Parties: Stauffer <I>versus</I> Young.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 455

39 Pa. 455

Stauffer versus Young.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 5, 1861.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Lancaster county.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Isaac E. Hiester and W. W. Brown, for plaintiff.—The specifications of error are all obnoxious to the same objection, and will be considered together. The learned judge below admitted the evidence under the erroneous notion that the case was one of fraudulent combination, in which, after direct evidence has been given of collusion between the parties to the alleged fraud, a wide latitude is allowed in the admission of their acts and declarations. But the issue here was not whether this bond was collusive between the parties, and fraudulent as to creditors, but simply on a bond for the recovery of the money due on its face. The fact in controversy was not fraud, but something from which fraud was to be inferred. The evidence of defendant's lunacy in 1830, and his restoration in 1848, could in no way elucidate the question in controversy, except through an unwarrantable series of inferences, beginning with the defendant's mental weakness and liability to imposition, and ending with the conclusion that therefore he was imposed upon and cheated by the plaintiff. But conclusions arrived at through a chain of two or more inferences, deducible from a remote fact, are too uncertain in the administration of justice to be relied on, and are rejected by the law.

The evidence admitted by the court, as set out in the 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, and 7th assignments of error, were as to collateral facts having no reliable connection with the subject-matter of the suit, nor tending to establish fraud or imposition. The jury were allowed to infer fraud from them in violation of the rule which requires it to be proved, and never presumes it. That plaintiff was indebted to the Commonwealth, or to Mr. Hiester, or held other notes against Long for money loaned after the execution of this bond, or had his property destroyed by fire and demanded the insurance-money, or was in the habit of having notes discounted at the banking-house of Reed & Co., may all be true without injuring the defendant in any way, because none of these acts were connected with the transaction on which this suit is brought. Nor does the fact that he had debts of his own about this time permit the fair inference that he had no money to lend, it was therefore not competent to prove the issue here, which was that the bond was procured by fraud. The rule laid down by Starkie and Best on Evidence, as to the proof of disputed facts by collateral circumstances, was violated in the admission of this evidence.

The evidence mentioned in the sixth assignment of error was in effect the admission of acts and declarations of a defendant in his own favour, which is not warranted by any rule of evidence.

William B. Fordney and Jacob B. Amwake, for defendant.— In this case fraud was alleged as the sole defence of the defendant; and if each one of the circumstances offered in evidence tended to elucidate the point in issue, or had even a remote bearing on it, it was admissible under the ruling of this court in Zerbe v. Miller, 4 Harris 495.

It was important to show the mental and physical status of defendant, and that it was known to plaintiff. His extreme age, great debility, long former mental affliction, in connection with the unusually large sum of money involved, the time and place where the transaction took place, and the absence of friends or counsel or supervision, were all calculated to excite suspicion: Kauffman v. Swarr, 5 Barr 231. The plaintiff averred that he raised this sum as a great favour to the defendant, and could show what he had done with it. Omitting to do so, we offered to show that defendant had no wants for the money, and could not receive and dispose of so large a sum without some of his neighbours knowing something of it. At worst it was only superfluous, but we insist that it was within the rule of Kauffman v. Swarr, 5 Barr 231, and Reinhard v. Keenbartz, 6 Watts 93. So also as to the other facts objected to; the jury had a right to all of them in a question of fraud: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. v. Hodge, 10 Casey 221, and Kaine v. Weigly, 10 Harris 183-4.

The opinion of the court was delivered, June 5th 1861, by WOODWARD, J.

The plaintiff, holding the bond of the defendant, dated 8th January 1859, in the penal sum of $10,000, conditioned for the payment of $5000 on the 1st of April 1859, and having entered judgment thereon in the Common Pleas of Lancaster county, the court, upon application of the defendant and proper affidavits filed, opened the judgment and let the defendant into his defence, which consisted of an allegation that the sum borrowed of the plaintiff was $500, and that the bond was obtained from him fraudulently for the sum of $5000.

The genuineness of the bond as a security for the smaller sum was admitted; it was resisted as false only as a bond for the larger sum. The question, therefore, was purely one of fact, and as such it was properly submitted to the jury. The only errors complained of were in admitting and rejecting evidence. Of the eight errors assigned, all but the last relate to evidence admitted.

If the signature of the defendant, an old man of eighty-two or eighty-three years of age, was obtained to a bond of $5000, in consideration of a loan for only $500, a gross fraud was perpetrated. But how was it to be proved? The bond was executed at the plaintiff's mill in the presence of a single witness, one of the plaintiff's millers, who saw the bond signed, heard it read to the defendant as a bond for $5000, and saw bank notes counted down to him; but the witness left the presence of the parties before the money was all counted, and was unable to prove the amount that was handed to the defendant.

Now a contract of such apparent regularity could be impeached for fraud by no direct and positive proof. It is very seldom that frauds are so bunglingly executed as to admit of direct proof. Unless exposed by circumstantial...