Case ID: pa_203/html/0016-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "by Mr. Justice Mitchell,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

McMahon, Appellant, v. McMahon.
    
      Judgment — Opening judgment — Consideration—Parent and child.
    
    A judgment entered on a judgment note given by a father and mother to their son will be opened and the defendants let into a defense where the testimony of the defendant tends to show that the note was given without any past or present consideration, and either from fear of the payee, or for an executory consideration of his care and assistance to them in the future, or with a view to giving him a preferred claim on their property after their death, or possibly from a mixture of all of these motives.
    Argued March 17, 1902.
    Appeal, No. 372, Jan. T., 1901, by plaintiff, from order of C. P. Sullivan Co., May T., 1900, No. 34, making absolute a rule to open judgment in case of Robert McMahon, Jr., to use of John W. Carroll v. Robert McMahon and Elizabeth McMahon.
    Before Mitchell, Dean, Brown, Mestrezat and Potter, JJ.
    Affirmed.
    Rule to open judgment.
    The opinion of the Supreme Court sufficiently states the case.
    
      
      Error assigned was order making absolute rule to open judgment.
    
      E. J. Mullen, for appellant. •
    
      Alphonsus Walsh and John H. Cronin, for appellees, were not heard.
    May 19, 1902:
   Opinion

by Mr. Justice Mitchell,

The testimony of the defendants tended to show that the note was given without any past or present consideration, and either from fear of the payee, their son, or for an executory consideration of his care and assistance to them in the future, or with a view to giving him a preferred claim on their property, after their death, or possibly from a mixture of all these motives.

The case, therefore, was one for the discretion of the court. If at the trial the defense should go to the merits of the whole claim, the verdict of the jury will settle it, while if it should appear that the real objection is not to the note itself but to the present enforcement of it, the judge acting as a chancellor can control both the judgment and the execution according to the equities shown.

Judgment affirmed.