Case ID: wright_1/html/0422-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "BY THE COURT.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

LOVE’S ADMINISTRATOR v. FREER AND CLARK.
    Equity — want of in a complainant who insists upon his legal advantages.
    Where the complainant refuses to make an ofEset or allowance of the demand of liis debtor, and insists upon payment, or to have each claim settled in a court of law, he will not be permitted afterwards to come into chancery to set off one judgment against the other — insisting upon the adjustment of law, he will be left to enjoy the fruits of it.
    Chancery. The complainant alleges that in February, 1828, he recovered a judgment against Freer, who is insolvent, and that the 413] ^judgment yet remains unpaid. That in April, 1829, Freer, for the use of Clark, recovered a judgment for a greater sum against the complainant as administrator, upon a contract between his intestate and Freer, which was assigned to Freer after Love’s death, with notice that the complainant held the note on which the judgment was afterwards recovered, as an ofEset. The bill prays to have complainant’s judgment-set off against so much of Freer’s judgment.
    
      Clark, in his answer,
    sets out the original contract on which the judgment was had for his use, and says he bought and paid for it, and at the time he purchased, adjusted the amount with Geddes, then executor of Love, at a sum so much greater than the amount he recovered, as would more than equal the complainant’s judgment. He avers, moreover, that at the trial of the suit brought by the complainant against Freer, it was offered to endorse the amount of the note on the contract, which the complainant refused. That on the trial of the suit upon the contract, it was again offered to the complainant to credit on the contract the amount of the note, which he again refused. That by a mistake in the broaches assigned,, of which the.complainant availed himself, the judgment against the •complainant was reduced about one-half below what should have been recovered, and nearly double the amount of the complainant’s judgment; but that he is now willing to allow the setoff, if the accounts are opened and fairly adjusted, and he is paid the unnecessary costs he has been put to by the complainant.
    
      Freer does not answer. There is a general replication.
    
      McConnell and Marshall for the complainant.
    
      Webb for Clark.
   BY THE COURT.

The complainant appears before us with little claim to equity. In both the suits he has had offered to him, and refused to accept, what he now asks, because he, as administrator, was both to collect and pay, and he therefore would not set •off one debt against another. He now refuses to open the transactions adjusted by the judgments after his refusal, and to settle on fair principles of justice. What equity can such a man have which we ought to protect? Refusing to do justice himself, he asks of a court of equity to enable him to avail himself of the fruits of his technical advantage in the judgment!

The bill is dismissed with costs.

[Setoff of judgments; Diehl v. Friester, 37 O. S. 473, 476.]