Case ID: mass_13/html/0192-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The President, Directors, and Company, of the Hallowell and Augusta Bank versus Samuel Howard and Others.
    Debtors to a banking company cannot set off the bills or notes of such companv in an action by the company against them.f
    [t This is still (1843) the law in Massachusetts. But in Meto York the contrary is law; see Miagara, Bank vs. Roosevelt, 9 Coioen. 409; Bruvn vs. Receiver, fyc., 9 Coroere, 413 .note.— Ed.]
    Assumpsit upon a promissory note made payable by the defend ants to the plaintiffs.
    Orr, for the defendants,
    moved for leave to pay into Court an amount, in the bills or notes issued by the plaintiffs and payable to bearer, equal to the sum due by the note sued ; and that the plaintiffs should strike out so much from their declaration, and proceed further at their peril.
    
      Todd, for the plaintiffs.
    These bills have been for a long period in a very depreciated state ; and however the justice of the case might be, were the bank the real plaintiff, yet, in the present case, the grossest injustice would be the consequence of the defendants prevailing in this motion.
    This note has been bond fide, assigned to a Mr. Cross, and the plaintiffs’ name is used merely for his benefit, the note not being in its form negotiable. The defendants have had due notice of the assignment. They received the full value for the note ; and, if this attempt at fraud is countenanced, it will be hereafter only for debtors to a banking corporation to depreciate its paper, by refusing to pay in their debts, and then to make payment in the paper thus reduced in its value.i
    
      Orr. Bank-bills are cash, and a tender in them is good to all intents, if not objected to at the time. This corporation cannot fairly object to receiving the bills to which they have given a currency, and for which they *have received the full value. It would be a gross fraud upon the public. If the demand sued be assigned, it was not assigned until it was overdue, and therefore the rights of the defendants are not changed.
   By the Court.

Nothing is a lawful tender but gold and silver. To permit the defendants thus to set off these promissory notes would be allowing cross demands to be set off in like manner in every case. These notes are nothing more than evidence of a right of action ; so that, if the assignment were out of the question, the motion could not obtain. The only course in such case would be, for the present defendants to obtain a judgment upon the notes and set off such judgment against the plaintiffs’ judgment.

The defendants were afterwards defaulted.