Case ID: scl_26/html/0198-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Evans, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

William B. Calhoun vs. B. Reynolds et al.
    
    A note dated January the 8th, 1838, with the words, “with interest from the first day of January last’’ — Held, that the time from which interest was to be computed, was the first day of January, 1837.
    The rule of law is, that a doubt shall be solved against him whose business it was to speak without ambiguity.
    Before Evans, J., at Abbeville, Spring Term, 1841.
    This was an action brought on a note, by which the defendants promised to pay “ eight hundred dollars, with interest from the 1st January last.” The note was dated 8th January, 1838. I was of opinion the 1st January last, did not mean the then month of January, but the 1st January 183T, and so directed the jury; the jury found accordingly.
    See Posey vs. Branch, 2 McM. 339. An.
    
    The defendants appealed, for error in the above instructions.
    
      Wardlaw and Perrin, for the motion. Burt, contra.
   Curia, per

Evans, J.

If the note had been dated in any other month than January, there would be no difficulty in construing it; or if it had referred to any remarkable period of time, as last Christmas, or last new year, or last fourth of July, there would be no uncertainty in the meaning. What is meant by the “ first January last ?” Does the word last qualify first or January ? Is it the last first day of January, or the first day of last January ? I thought on the trial that *last applied to January, and that the defendant did not mean the first of the then month of January, but the first day of the preceding January, that is the 1st January, 1831. In this opinion my brethren concur, and especially for the reason that the doubt arises on the language of the defendants, and the rule of law in such case is, that the doubt shall be solved against him whose business it was to speak without ambiguity.

The whole concurred.