Case ID: njl_8/html/0066-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Swayze v. Hull.
    CERTIORARI.
    An action cannot be maintained upon a note given by a candidate to a person in consideration of his agreeing to give to the candidate bis interest at the ensuing election.
    This was a certiorari brought to reverse the judgment of a justice obtained by Hull, the plaintiff below, against Swayze, upon the following state of demand. “ The plaintiff demands of the defendant, $59 due the plaintiff on a note of hand given to him by the defendant for <jj>50j bearing date the 24th February, 1816, which note according to a condition contained therein, became due in the fall of the year 1816, after the fall’s election, provided the said Swayze succeeded in getting the sheriff’s office, and the said Samuel Hull, gave him his interest in getting said office, all of which provisions and conditions have been fully complied with by the said plaintiff, and the said defendant was really appointed sheriff.”
    Wall, for the plaintiff in certiorari,
    contended that the judgment ought to.be reversed, because the state of demand exhibited no legal cause of action. The agreement set forth was a corrupt bargain to secure the interest of the plaintiff below in the election for sheriff; that such agreements were in direct violation of sound policy, and therefore void by the principles of the common law, and that to countenance them in a court of justice would be to destroy the -purity of our elections.
   Per curiam.

There is no doubt it is a corrupt and void agreement. Therefore take a reversal.

Judgment reversed. 
      
       So, all contracts and agreements which have for their object anything contrary to principles of sound policy are void by the common law. Cowp. Rep. 39; 1 Com. on Cont. 30; 4 Esp. Rep. 97.