Case Name: Christopher Sides against Henry Schnebly, Executor of John Boozer
Court: General Court of Maryland
Jurisdiction: Maryland
Decision Date: 1794-10
Citations: 3 Md. 243
Docket Number: 
Parties: Christopher Sides against Henry Schnebly, Executor of John Boozer.
Judges: 
Reporter: Maryland reports, being a series of the most important law cases argued and determined in the Provincial Court and Court of Appeals of the then province of Maryland, from the year 1700 [i.e. 1658] down to the [end of 1799]
Volume: 3
Pages: 243–244

Head Matter:
GENERAL COURT,
OCTOBER TERM, 1794.
Christopher Sides against Henry Schnebly, Executor of John Boozer.
THIS was an action of debt on a writing obligatory, dated the 6th of January, 1792, in the penal sum of 800/. conditioned for the payment of 400/. twelve months after the decease of the obligor. Non est factum was pleaded ; to which plea was annexed the affidavit of the executor, that he believed the facts set forth in the plea were true.
By a bill of exceptions taken in the cause, it appears the defendant, to maintain the issue of non est factum, proved that John Boozer, the obligor, was an illiterate German, and that the two persons whose names appear as the subscribing- witnesses to the said bond, lived, at the time of the date thereof, and long before and after-wards, in the state of Pennsylvania, above sixty miles from the house in which the plaintiff alleges the bond was executed; and gave in evidence, that the said two persons, whose names appear as subscribing witnesses to the bond, and the plaintiff, were persons of general bad character. The defendant also offered to prove that many persons of respectable characters, who spoke both the German and English languages, lived in -the neighbourhood of the said Boozer, at the time the plaintiff alleges the bond was executed. To this evidence the plaintiff’s counsel objected.

Opinion:
The Court
(S. Chase, Ch. J. and f. T. Chase, J.)
were of opinion, that the evidence was proper to be offered to the jury as a circumstance for their consideration, and from which they might infer that the said Boozer did not execute the bond.