The Alaska citizen., 1913-08-25
POPULAR TALKS ON LAW
SIGNING A NOTE
By Walter K Towers A. B. j. D. of the Michigan Bar.


 One noon while Jason Edwards was sitting on the porch of his pros rcrous farm home, resting before he returned to the fields. shiny top buggy drawn by a long-legged bay drew into the side yard and a brisk young man descended. He present. ed the card of the National Silo Co. and solicited an order Mir. Edwards needed a silo and signed an order for one. 10 be erected later. He read the order carefully and not ed it's contents. It clearly read as an order for a silo, fir the cree tion of which, if completed within sixty days after date, he was 10 pay s100.0o
 No silo apeared. nor could Mir. Edwards locate the company, but he saw nothing to worry about until, sixty days later. neer-by bank presented 10 him for payment note ! fir $1o0.00 in regular form and bearing his signature. He protested that he had signed no such note yet acknowledged that it was his sigma ture. Examination showed that 1t was one end of the silo order he had signed It ad been so worded and arranged that one end might he cut off leaving a promissory note in regular form. The bnk insisted l tbat f had paid full price for a reg. ular note and as it was negotiable i instrument" it was protected as a bona fide holder. Edwards sought advce and being told that he would have to pay the note did SO.
 Proper advice by a competent at
 0rrey would probably have saved Edwards $1oo since few states will support such q note. signed under such rcumstances. True, if one is induced to sign a negotiable pr m issory note through fraud and that note is sold ill ordinary course to q bank or individual, the purchaser accepting il in perfect honesty and good faith paying full value for an apparently regular instrument that is not yet due the quality Of ne portability is such that the purchaser will have better rights than the rogue who transferred it. Indeed. under such circumstances. the signer would viewed. the case If Jason Edwards is not such case. He was not induced by fraud to sign note. because he did not sign a note. What he signed was an order Having never signed note. but something entirely different which was changed into note he is no more liable than if his signature was forged to a regular note. Yet it is not strange that many laymen have confused this rule and suffered needlessly when some of our courts have made the mistake
 The other side of the picture is the fraud practised on Allan Me Goorty and his wife. Again a buggy came dawn the road, but it was driy- en wildly by an attractive young man, and to h;s arm clung young woman. They paused at the hospit- able-looking house fir refuge and told of eloping from a cruel father. Now. all the world loves lover and the McGoortys were all assistance. Opportunely. quite by accident, of course. a clericallooking gentleman. appeared from the other direction. Yes. he would marry them. and did at least. he went through a cere- mony. Of course the bride wept, so did Mrs McGoorty. and Mr. McGoorty blew his nose and found his eyes a bi: dim. In the confusion the 'Rever end remarked that the witnesses must sign the certificate and pushed 2 paper toward them which they readily signed.
 Three months later a bank produc ed the marriage certificate" for payment It was a regularly drawn note for $50000 McGoorty had to pay it. as he was legally liable. He had committed the fault of failing to read what he had signed In his case he actually signed a note Of course, neither the Reverend" nor ed from the McGcortys, but they had negotiated the note at the bank. which, having nothing to arouse it's suspicious and knowing McGoorty's signature. purchased it for full value, whereupon the Reverend" and his friends moved on to try their scheme 1 in virgin soil, taking care to be well away when the notes fell due. Where one of two innocent persons must suffer the law takes the view that the one who by his carelesness made the fraud possible must foot the bill.
 A similar result followed in the case of Clarence Tucker, who pur- chased and accepted barrel of medicated calf meal, giving his note for $10 therefore. The bottom two