Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/46/192/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 20:47:12+00:00

Document:
The following principles of equity jurisprudence may be affirmed to be without exception -- namely that whosoever would seek admission into a court of equity must come with clean hands; that such a court will never interfere in opposition to conscience or good faith; that it will never be called into activity to remedy the consequences of laches or neglect, or the want of reasonable diligence.
Therefore, where a complainant prays to be relieved from the fulfillment of a contract, which was intentionally made in fraud of the law, the answer is that however unworthy may have been the conduct of his opponent, the parties are in pari delicto. The complainant cannot be admitted to plead his own demerits.
Nor is it any ground of interference when a complainant applies to be relieved from the payment of a promissory note given under the above circumstances, upon which judgment had been recovered at law. The consideration upon which the note was given was then open to inquiry, and it is a sufficient indulgence to have been permitted once to set up such a defense.
The cases examined, sowing how far and under what circumstances the liability of a surety becomes fixed upon him as a principal debtor.
Where the plaintiff in a suit voluntarily abstains from pressing the principal debtor, but receives no consideration for such indulgence, nor puts any limitation upon his right to proceed upon his execution, whenever it may be his pleasure to do so, this conduct furnishes no reason for the exemption of the surety from liability, and especially where the surety had united with his principal in a forthcoming bond.
The authorities upon this point examined.
"The marshal is authorized to levy on property enough of the defendants to pay the plaintiff's execution, and return the levy to court without selling or advertising for sale, unless other judgments younger than this are pressed to an amount to endanger this debt; if so, the property will have to be sold March 24, 1840."
1st. That the complainant, was a mere surety in the note on which the action was instituted, and that the indulgence granted by the direction to the marshal after judgment obtained was in fraud of defendant's rights as a surety; was in its operation, in fact, injurious to him, from the deterioration of the property of Pinkard the principal during the interval of that indulgence; was an infraction of the undertaking of the surety, and therefore absolved him from all responsibility.
2dly. That the instrument on which the judgment was obtained was one of several notes given for the purchase of a number of slaves sold by the intestate of the plaintiff to Pinkard, several of whom were unsound, although, as the plaintiff charges, they were (as he believes) warranted to be sound and healthy.
3dly. That although the slaves for which the notes were given were delivered in the State of Tennessee, yet the contract for them was in fact made at Vicksburg, in Mississippi, and was designed to be, and was in reality, a fraud upon the Constitution and laws of Mississippi, forbidding the introduction of slaves, as merchandise, within that state.
behalf of the complainant, and some exhibits filed by the respondent, but as these are deemed immaterial to the questions on which the decision of this cause properly depends, they will not be made subjects of comment. Upon a final hearing before the circuit judge, on 15 May, 1844, it was decreed, that the injunction awarded by the district judge on the 25th of October, 1842, should be dissolved, and the bill of the complainant dismissed with costs.
From this decree a appeal was taken to this Court.
MR. JUSTICE DANIEL, after having read the statement of the case prefixed to this report, proceeded to deliver the opinion of the Court.
to set up at law either the failure or the illegality of the consideration for which the note was given; no reason is perceived why such a defense should not have been made or attempted. The action at law was founded upon a simple promissory note, a parol contract in legal intendment, and not upon a specialty; the consideration was fully open to investigation, and it was surely a sufficient indulgence to the payees of that note to have been permitted once to set up a defense by which payment may have been resisted, whilst the whole consideration received by them for their undertaking would have been withheld, and absolutely possessed and enjoyed by them. But these payees of the note did not stop even here. After the first judgment recovered against them, and after the levy of an execution sued out on that judgment, they voluntarily go forward, the complainant amongst them, execute to the respondent their forthcoming bond, equivalent in effect to a confession of a second judgment, and after these repeated and conclusive recognitions of their liability, they invoke the aid of a court which repels whatever is unfair, or even illiberal, to declare that these proceedings, thus solemnly had and evidenced of record, shall be utterly null; that the respondent shall be stripped of his property without the promised equivalent, and that property be secured, if not to the complainant, to one with whom he was associated in effecting its relinquishment by the owner.
for by the respondent, were it necessary here to pass upon it, would not be found without support from decided cases.
Thus, for instance, it was ruled by Chancellor Kent in Bay v. Tallmadge, 5 Johns.Ch. 305, that where bail become fixed with the payment of the debt of the defendant, their character of bail ceases; that after judgment and execution against bail and sureties, there is an end of the relation of principal and surety and the bail cannot claim any advantage against the creditor on the ground of want of diligence in prosecuting the principal debtor. In Prout v. Lennox, 3 Wheat. 520, it is laid down by Livingston, Justice, in delivering the opinion of the Court, that "the endorser of a note, who has been charged by due notice of the maker's default, is not entitled to the aid of a court of equity as a surety." But without pushing further an investigation which is unnecessary to the decision of the case before us, let it be conceded that the complainant was strictly a surety in the note on which the judgment was obtained at law; have any of his rights been impaired, or have any new rights grown up to him, springing from the conduct of the respondent or his agents in reference to that judgment and the proceedings had thereupon? The directions given by the attorney for the plaintiff in the judgment have been set out in extenso. These directions express upon their face no consideration received or promised for the forbearance -- no limitation upon the right of the plaintiff at law to proceed upon his execution -- no condition or stipulation of any kind; nor is there a tittle of proof as to the existence of any such consideration, limitation, or agreement, expressed or understood. We see nothing in the case but a voluntary forbearance, which the plaintiff was at perfect liberty to terminate at his pleasure. What say the authorities in relation to a proceeding of this character? In the case of Rees v. Berrington, 2 Ves., cited and pressed in the argument, the interposition of the chancellor was founded upon the ground of an actual and substantive change of the relation and responsibility of the surety, and in such a case his lordship very justly observed, that he would not undertake to calculate the degree of injury which might have flowed from it; that if the situation had in fact been changed, that was sufficient to release the surety altogether, for it was an attempt to impose on him a responsibility he had never assumed; but in the case before us was there any such change wrought by a mere voluntary forbearance, creating no obligation anywhere -- contracting with nothing, nor with any person? A few of the numerous cases, both at law and in equity, which are applicable to this question will be adduced.
time been extended, and that after the note fell due the principal became insolvent. Held also, in that case, that a promise to pay interest during the time of forbearance was no consideration for such agreement.
"Mere indulgence at the will of the creditor, extended to the debtor, in no way discharges the obligation of the surety; if it did, it would be a most inconvenient and oppressive rule, as then suits must immediately follow the maturity of paper. It is a settled rule, that there must be a valid common law agreement to give time, founded of course on a good consideration, to have this effect."
Norris v. Crummie, 2 Rand. 328. It is ruled, that indulgence granted by a creditor to the principal debtor will not discharge the sureties of such debtor, unless the creditor shall have bound himself in law or in equity not to pursue his remedy against the principal for a definite length of time.
Hunter's Administrators v. Jett, 4 Rand. 104. A surety will not be discharged by indulgence granted by the creditor to the principal debtor, unless such indulgence ties up the hands of the creditor from pursuing the debtor at law; nor will the surety be discharged even then, if the indulgence shall have been given with his knowledge and assent.
McKinney's Executors v. Waller, 1 Leigh 434. A mere indulgence to a principal debtor by a creditor, not binding him to suspend his proceedings for any time, though such indulgence be given at the very time the sheriff is about to levy execution on the property of the principal, and although in consequence of that indulgence the principal debtor has been enabled to remove his property out property out of the reach of future process, was not, even in equity, a discharge of the surety.
Alcock v. Hill, 4 Leigh 622. A creditor suspends execution on a forthcoming bond for several years, but he does so without consideration, and he no wise binds himself to suspend execution for any definite time; the principal and all the sureties but one become insolvent; and then the creditor sues out execution against the solvent surety. Held that the surety is not entitled to relief in equity. The requisites in that case stated as indispensable for absolving the surety are, first, a consideration; second, a promise to indulge; third, the definite nature of such a promise; and, fourth, the absence of assent by the surety.
This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Mississippi, and was argued by counsel. On consideration whereof, it is now here ordered and decreed by this Court that the decree of the said circuit court in this cause be and the same is hereby affirmed with costs.

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