Case ID: scl_2/html/0517-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "The Judges,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Executors of John Willson ads. Minor Winn.
    
      Columbia,
    
    1804.
    A release to one co-obligor to a bondt is a. release and discharge the whole of them; and the assignee of such bond (not conusant of such release) may recover the balance due oit the bond from, the assignor, where therein a guaranty of the payment.
    SPECIAL action on the case, tried in Fairfield district. Verdict for plaintiff. Motion for new trial.
    This action was founded on the special guaranty of a bond, assigned by the deceased Willson in his life-time, to the plaintiff Minor Winn. It appeared, that in the year Í784, the bond above mentioned was given by Adam Fotvler Brisbane, John Winn, Hugh Millings and James Brown, to the deceased John Willson, for 435/. sterling. Some time after the bond became due, John Winn, one of the obligors settled with the obligee Willson, for his one-fourth part or share of the bond, by delivering him a negro and a horse, which Willson accepted of for his full proportion of the debt, and executed a release in due form, for his share of the principal and interest due on the said bond.
    This bond afterwards, in some transaction between Willson and the plaintiff, Minor Winn, was assigned over to the latter; and at the time of the assignment, Willson, by an agreement in -writing under his hand, agreed to guaranty the payment of the balance due on the said bond. The bond was afterwards put in suit against the other obligors, but nothing could be recovered from them, as they pleaded the release to John Winn in bar of the obligation. In the mean time, Willson died, and this suit was brought against his executors, upon the deceased’s guaranty, when a verdict was given by the jury for the bala- . of principal and interest due on it, after deducting the payment made by John Winn.
    The present was therefore a motion for a new trial, on the ground, that the presiding Judge had refused, on the trial, to let the defendants go into proof, in order to 
      show that the other obligors were fully able and solvent, and could have paid the balance due on the bond, if due diligence had been used, and that it was the plaintiif’s own fault that the money had not been recovered.
    
      Co. IAU. 232. 1 Esp. Dig. SÍS. ■ .
    
    For the plaintiff, in reply, against the motion, it was urgedj that such kind of testimony was totally irrelevant, as-it was very immaterial whether the three other obligors to the bond were solvent or not, as the release to one of the co-obligors, John Winn, was a release to the whole, if they chose to take advantage of it. Consequently, the bond had been by the testator’s own act, cancelled and destroyed, which left him responsible on his guaranty.
    Blanding, for plaintiff. Egan, for defendant.
   The Judges,

after hearing counsel on both sides, were unanimously of opinion, that the release of one co-obligor to a bond, vras a release to the whole of them, and operated as a full discharge in law, of the money due thereon; consequently, the deceased became liable to make good to the assignee, the balance due upon it, upon his guaranty.

New trial refused. ,

Present, Grimke, Waties, Bay, Brevard and Lee, Judges.