Case Name: Riggs v. Magruder
Court: United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1817-12
Citations: 2 Cranch 143
Docket Number: 
Parties: Riggs v. Magruder.
Judges: (Thruston, J., absent,)
Reporter: Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (District of Columbia - reported by Mackey)
Volume: 2
Pages: 143–143

Head Matter:
Riggs v. Magruder.
A contract for the sale of the notes of a private hank, is within the statute of frauds.
A verbal agreement, which is to be put into writing and signed the next day, is not complete so as to bind either party, until reduced to writing and signed.
The defendant agreed to receive of the plaintiff $5000 of the notes of the Merchants Bank, (a private bank) if delivered in twenty days, and pay him for them $4,900, in good current notes of the district banks. Each was to forfeit $500 if he refused to comply; the agreement was to be reduced to writing, and signed the next day at the plaintiff’s counting-room. The defendant refused to sign it the next day, or to carry it into effect. The plaintiff tendered the notes within the twenty days, apd the defendant refused to receive them.
Mr. Swann, Mr. Key, Mr. Wiley, and Mr. Taney, for the defendant,
contended that stocks were merchandise, and a fortiori the notes of a banking company, and therefore the agreement was void by the statute of frauds. 1 Comyn on Cont. 89; Roberts on Frauds, 172, 184, 186. But if not void by that statute, it was never complete as a contract, because it was to be reduced to writing and signed the next day, which was never done. Roberts, 6.
Mr. Lockerman and Mr. Jones, contra.
Bank-notes'are not merchandise, and therefore a sale of them is not within the statute. They cannot be the subject of larceny at common law. Ann Gray’s case, Leach, Cr. Law, 234; Horne’s case, Leach, 403. These bank-notes are mere choses in action. It was no part of the agreement that it should be reduced to writing. There was no locus pamitentim.

Opinion:
The Court
(Thruston, J., absent,)
decided, that the agreement was void by the 17th section' of the statute of frauds ; and that if the jury should be of opinion from the evidence, that it was agreed between the parties that the oral contract should be reduced to writing the next day, and signed by the parties, and that it was not so reduced and signed, the contract was never complete.