Case Name: Charles Wood, Appellant, v. William Mitchell, Respondent
Court: New York Supreme Court, General Term
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1889-07-09
Citations: 3 Silv. Sup. 346
Docket Number: 
Parties: Charles Wood, Appellant, v. William Mitchell, Respondent.
Judges: 
Reporter: Silvernail's Supreme Court Reports
Volume: 3
Pages: 346–349

Head Matter:
Charles Wood, Appellant, v. William Mitchell, Respondent.
Supreme Court, First Department, General Term,
July 9, 1889.
Judgment. Confession.—A judgment by confession in favor of an infant for a tort, will be set aside on motion of a subsequent judgment creditor.
Appeal from an order denying a motion to set aside a judgment.
J. C. Bergen, for appellant.
Cornelius Boremus, and Barlow & Carman, for respondent.

Opinion:
Van Brunt, P. J.
We cannot concur in the conclusion to which Mr. Justice Macomber has arrived in this case.
It is not necessary to determine whether, under any circumstances, a confession of judgment might, or might not, be entered in favor of an infant, or whether the appointment of a guardian ad litem, nunc fro tunc, six months after the entry of the judgment, in any way altered the status of the judgment.
It is, however, clear that the plaintiff, in the confession, might accept or reject the same, more especially in a case such as the one at bar, where the acceptance of the confession would work a waver of a tort, which the plaintiff, in the confession, had suffered at the hands of the defendant in the confession. The result would be that, in the case of an infant, a person who had become liable on a tort to an infant, might confess a judgment in favor of the infant as upon a contract, and place this judgment in the way of other cred itors pursuing their remedies against his property, which judgment the infant plaintiff could repudiate upon attaining his majority. Such results should not be permitted, unless the law expressly authorizes them, and as no such inference is to be drawn in favor of confessions for liabilities arising under circumstances such as the one under consideration, the motion to set aside the confession, in the case at bar, should have been granted.
The order should be reversed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements, and the motion granted.
Bartlett, J.,
concurs.