Case ID: mart-os_2/html/0172-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

HUDSON'S CASE.
    Intention to depart, easily presumed, when a frau-dulentor suspicious disposal of property is proven.
    HE was arrested under the 22d sect. of the act of 1807, ch. 1,on the affidavit of the agent orone of his creditors.
    Livingston and Depeyster
    moved that they might be allowed to disprove the intention "frauddlently and permanently to-depart"--in order to obtain his release, without giving security.
    Wi TN ES S ES were accordingly introduced, which testified to ~their belief that he meant to remain in the territory, to his affairs (particularly the present debt) were settled: a belief which arose from their conversations with him, and the nature of certain transactions, in which he had lately engaged.
    Smith and Duncan,
    who had obtained the judge's order, insisted on the proof resulting from the affidavit on which it had issued; and on the proof which they made, that he had sold a quantity of goods to the amount of about 60,000 dollars, to a person, who had failed the year before, on a simple note, without any endorser or any kind of security. The goods being the ground of the present debt, for which judgment had been confessed, with a long stay of execution. It was farther proved that the debtor, some time before, in an attempt to obtain the benefit of an insolvent law, had sworn to a schedule of his property, from which a considerable part of his estate was suspected to be omitted.
    Livingston and Depeyster.
    The affidavit goes oly to the belief of the deponent-this king of proof is only admissible when the statute authori-ses it. The section under which the judge's order issued, requires proof "to the satisfaction of " any judge of the Superior Court."
    Perhaps the affidavit would have entitled the creditor to a writ of sequestration, but surely not tothe arrest of the debtor, before the debt became payable.
   By the Court.

Proof is the offer of circumstances which create conviction. A debtor may conceal his intention, so as to deprive his creditor of the means of administering positive evidence of it. Circumstantial evidence must then be admitted.

Packing off goods is admitted to be evidence of intended flight. Reducing all one's goods into cash, paper, or portable effects, will operate as strongly upon the mindS

In the intention to defraud be proven, a magistrate will be satisfied with facility of the intention to depart.

In the present case, the disposal of so large a quantity of goods, by far the greatest part, if not the whole, of the property in the defendant's possession, in such a manner that when the execution will be at its maturity, they will be removed from. its effects-the sale too, to a man who failed the year before, who has no visible property, without any surety, is a circumstance so uncommon, as to excite great suspicion and amount to positive evidence if not plausible accounted for. In every bailee, very gross negligence amounts to fraud.

The impossibility of coming to any property of the debtor, certainly excuses the creditor, if he does not resort to this mode of relief.

THE evidence before the Court, does not disprove the alledged intention. The judge who granted the order, was satisfied with the proof offered; and there is nothing in what is presented to us, to induce us to believe that the intention to depart does not exist.

Release denied.