Case ID: va_4/html/0222-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "WHITE, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

*George Ferguson, Assignee of Blackburn Akers, v. Thomas Highley.
    Debt—Set-Off—Jurisdiction.—Debt for a sum more than one hundred dollars, reduced to a sum below it, by a set-off. The Superior Court has jurisdiction to render judgment on the verdict.
    The Plaintiff, as assignee of Akers, brought an Action of Debt against the Defendant, in the Superior Court of Wythe county, on a single bill, for one hundred dollars and thirty-four cents, dated the 1st of April, 1815. The assignment is dated 21st March, 1816. The verdict is in the following words“ We of the jury find for the Plaintiff eighty-seven dollars and thirty-four cents debt, with interest thereon from the 21st day of May, 1816, till paid, at the rate of six per centum per annum. We do further find, that the debt originally was one hundred dollars and thirty-four cents, but the Defendant claimed a credit for twenty dollars, being so much money proved to have been collected by the assignor, for the use of the Defendant, on the 20th May, 1816, and not paid to the said Defendant, which credit is allowed by the jury.”
    The Defendant prayed that no judgment should be rendered upon the verdict of the jury in this case, because the Court had no jurisdiction, the verdict being for eighty-seven dollars and thirty-four cents only, and the twenty dollars being a payment, and not a set-off, and because the verdict was complete without the latter finding: and the question arising upon this motion, was by the Circuit Court adjourned to the General Court, for novelty and difficulty. It may be proper to mention, that the Defendant’s plea was payment to the assignor before notice of the assignment.
    
      
      See monographic note on “Debt, The Action of” appended to Davis v. Mead, 13 Gratt. 118.
    
    
      
      See monographic note on “ Jurisdiction ” appended to Phippen v. Durham, 8 Gratt. 457.
    
   WHITE, J.,

pronounced the following opinion:

“It is the unanimous opinion of all the Judges present, that although the verdict in this Case is for eighty-seven dollars and thirty-four cents only, yet as the Plaintiff shewed himself to have been originally entitled to his action for one hundred dollars and thirty-four cents, and as this *sum was reduced by evidence given on the trial, of a set-off against the assignor, .of which ..it .does .not appear the Plaintiff had any notice ; this case is different from the case of a payment made to the Plaintiff himself, of which he must be supposed cognizant at the time of bringing his suit; and that the judgment ought not to be arrested : which is ordered to be certified,” &c.

Note (in edition of 1853).—It might be supposed by some, from the terms in which this opinion of the Court is expressed, that the Case turned upon the distinction between the assignee and assignor; but all the Judges were of opinion, that if Akers himself had brought the suit, judgment ought not to have been arrested, because the credit allowed was a set-off, and not a payment, and this, according to several previous decisions.