Verges v. Giboney
| Decision Date | 31 October 1866 |
| Citation | 38 Mo. 458 |
| Parties | JACQUES E. VERGES, Respondent, v. ANDREW GIBONEY, Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from Cape Girardeau Circuit Court.
Krum, Decker & Krum, with T. B. English, for appellant.
All legislative acts should be construed prospectively, unless the act itself makes the law retrospective. The act of Congress of 1861 concerning legal tender notes is prospective, and was not intended to apply to debts due at the time of its passage. The decree made is defective; it releases the land from all encumbrance created by the deed, and fails to secure to appellant even the amount of the debt with interest.
Glover & Shepley, for respondent.
The only question raised in this case is whether a contract entered into prior to the passage of the act of Congress making Treasury notes a legal tender in the payment of debts, stands unaffected by the provisions of that act. If that be assumed, it is very difficult to see upon what basis it can be contended, that contracts made prior to the act of 1862 are not affected by its provisions.
When a contract is made payable in money, it is necessarily made subject to the laws of the country prescribing what is money. When Congress reduced the standard of gold and silver, so that there was a very considerable difference between the value of all denominations coined before and after the passage of that act, no one ever pretended that contracts made before the passage of that act were not affected by that act, or that the holders of them could demand the coin authorized at the time the contract was made.
If Congress is supreme in this matter of declaring with what debts may be paid, then necessarily their action must control all contracts whenever made.
Metropolitan Bk. v. Vay Dyck, 27 N. Y. 400, on the general question; Buckbagger v. Shultz, 13 Mich. 420; Shœnberger v. Watts, 10 Law. Reg. 553, in which its application to contracts made before the act of 1862 was passed is considered, as it is also in the following: Warinbold v. Schlectroy, 16 Iowa, 244; Wood v. Ballar, 6 Allen, 516; Schellarberger v. Brinton, 13 Law Reg. 591; Kempton v. Bronson, 45 Barb. Sup. R. 618; Wilson v. Morgan, 30 How. Pr. 386.
This is an action in the nature of a bill in equity to redeem certain property alleged to have been mortgaged by the respondent, Verges, to the appellant. The pleadings in the case present substantially but one issue for trial, and the only one to be considered here.
The petition of the respondent sets out at length, that he and his wife, in the year 1857, executed a deed of mortgage conveying certain real estate, therein described, to the said Giboney, to secure the payment of a certain note described, and which was executed by respondent in favor of the appellant, said note being due and payable in one year thereafter that in January, 1865, by his duly authorized agent he had tendered to Giboney a...
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Verges v. Giboney
...for, and rendered judgment for the plaintiff; upon which the defendant appealed to this court, where the judgment was affirmed. (Verges v. Giboney, 38 Mo. 458.) After these proceedings, and the payment of the debt as aforesaid, the plaintiff caused notice to be served on the defendant, requ......