Case ID: scl_29/html/0398-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Frost, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Heckscher vs. Robertson.
    
    1. Assumpsit on bills of exchange drawn by defendants, payable to their order and endorsed to plaintiffs. The bills were protested for non-acceptance and non-payment. In an action against the drawers, the plea was that t-hey had authority to draw, and that the drawee was bound in law to accept the hills, of which the plaintiffs afterwards had notice; and that plaintiffs, by a written release under seal, had released the drawee from all liability ; but it was not alledged that they had been accepted. Demurrer to the plea, which was overruled. Held that the plea was no bar to plaintiffs’s action, and judgment should have been for the demurrer.
    
      Before Richardson, J. at Charleston, October Term, 1843.
    Assumpsit on three bills of exchange, drawn by James Robertson & Co. on Andrew Taylor of Liverpool, at sixty days sight, payable to the order of drawers, and by them endorsed to the plaintiffs, Heckscher, Coster and Matfield. The bills were protested for non-acceptance, on 6th April 1840, and for non-payment on 8th June, 1840.
    Defendant pleaded, 1st. non-assumpsit.
    2. that James Robertson & Co. had authority from the said Andew Taylor, to draw said bills on him; and the said Andrew Taylor was bound in law, to accept and pay the said bills of exchange, of which they the said plaintiffs afterwards had notice ; and that the plaintiffs afterwards by a certain writing of release, sealed with their seals, and now shewn to the Court here, did release and discharge the said Andrew Taylor of and from all claim and demand which they then had or hereafter might have against him, by reason of the said bills of exchange in the said declaration mentioned; and this he is ready to verify. Wherefore, <& c.
    To this plea the plaintiffs demurred, and the defendants joined in demurrer.
    On the hearing of the demurrer, his Honor Judge Richardson overruled the same, and gave judgment for defendant on his plea. From this judgment plaintiffs appealed, and insisted that the same should be reversed, because the release of Andrew Taylor was no discharge of the defendants’s liability.
    
      
      Mr. Petigru for the motion.
    
      Yeadon, contra.
    Cited Chitty on bills, 215, 220.
   Curia, per

Frost, J.

A release to a drawee who has not accepted a bill, is inoperative, for there is no liability or cause'of action, to be discharged. It is conceded that a release to a drawee, who has accepted, discharges the drawer. An acceptance may be verbal, or in writing on the bill itself, or on another paper, as by a letter undertaking to accept a bill already drawn, or by a like verbal engagement, communicated to third persons, who, on the credit of it, advance money on the bill. The drawee can become a party to a bill only by accepting it in one of these modes. An undertaking to pay a bill by either, is an acceptance, and should be declared on, generally, as such; Clark vs. Cock, 4 East. 67. If the defendants meant to rely on such an engagement by Taylor to pay the bills, it should have been alleged that he had accepted them. The plea would then have been good. If the plaintiffs, intending to sue Taylor, as acceptor of the bills, should allege that Robertson & Company had authority from the said Taylor to draw the said bills on him, and that said “Taylor was bound in law, to accept and pay the said bills,” it would be clearly demurrable, for not setting out a sufficient cause of action. Chitty on bills, 10 Am. Ed. 569. This is the cause of action which the plea alleges the plaintiffs had against Taylor “by reason of these bills.” The release of it is relied on to discharge the drawee. The plea then amounts only to this, that the .plaintiffs released all claim against the drawee, who, it is not alleged had accepted, The allegation that Taylor was bound in law to accept the bills, implies, necessarily, that he had not, in fact accepted them. The plaintiffs had no cause of action against Taylor, and the release remitted nothing. The plea is therefore insufficient to bar the plaintiffs’s action, and judgment should have been for the demurrer. The motion is granted.

O’Neall, Evans, Butler, and Wardlaw, JJ. concurred.