Case ID: f_148/html/0619-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "DALLAS, Circuit Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SOUTHERN CONST. CO. v. FARNHAM CO.
    (Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.
    November 12, 1906.)
    No. 11.
    Evidence — Fakol Evidence Affecting Wbimss.
    In an action at law on a written contract, an affidavit of defense setting out a contemporaneous verbal agreement adding a term to tlic contract by creating an additional obligation on the part of plaintiff, and alleging 'a breach of such agreement, does not state a defense, under the settled rule that, when a contract hag been reduced to writing, such writing cannot be contradicted, altered, added to, or varied by oral evidence.
    [Ed. Note. — For cases in point, see Cent. Dig. vol. 20, Evidence, §§ 2030-2047.]
    In Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
    For opinion below, see 144 Fed. 989.
    Charles E. McKeehan, for plaintiff in error.
    Thomas Raeburn White, for defendant in error.
    Before DARLAS, GRAY, and BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judges.
   DALLAS, Circuit Judge.

The decision of the circuit court is sufficiently supported by the opinion of the learned District Judge. 144 Fed. 989. The. suggestion now made, that the only extrinsic proof requisite to sustain the defense which he held to be insufficient in law, would be of “a consideration additional to the consideration named in the writing,” cannot be accepted. What really was proposed by the affidavit of defense was not merely to show by oral evidence that, as a fact, a consideration other than that mentioned in the written contract was given, but to vary the terms of the contract itself, by adding to it an obligation-creating provision which it did not contain; and this could not be done without violation of the long-settled rule, that when a contract has been reduced to the form of a document or series of documents, the contents of any such document or documents may not be contradicted, altered, added' to, or varied by oral evidence.

The judgment is affirmed.