Court Opinion

ID: 9299354
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:05:56.51885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:37.500123
License: Public Domain

GRIER, Circuit Justice.
The bill is undoubtedly drawn with much ingenuity, and in view of the difficulties in which the learned pleader saw it to be encompassed. He has, therefore, by allegations of fraud and mistake, endeavoured to draw the case within those well known heads of chancery jurisdiction. But the facts and circumstances stated in the bill, show that there was neither fraud nor mistake in the case.
If a man, ignorant of the law that the release of one joint debtor is a release of the other, should give such a release, equity will not interefere to protect him against the legal consequences of his act. Hunt v. Rousmaniere, 1 Pet. [26 U. S.] 1. And even if the mere allegation of a mistake of the law would give jurisdiction to courts of equity, and be a sufficient ground for relief, the documents connected with this transaction, being executed by most able and learned counsel, leave not the slightest room for any pret'ence of a mistake of the law. On the contrary, it will appear (as we shall show) that they were fully aware of the legal effect and consequences of the voluntary discharge of the defendant-from imprisonment, and obtained all that they expected to obtain by his arrest.
Assuming, for the purposes of this case, that if the defendant had obtained his discharge from the arrest by fraud and deceit practised on the plaintiff, equity would interfere and annul the discharge so obtained, as to all its legal effects prejudicial to the defrauded party; yet the facts stated in the plaintiffs’ bill do not allege such a case. Thomson made no false representations in order to -obtain his discharge; he made no concealment of his property; he gave security to pay the value of the property settled on his wife, if it should be determined that the property was liable to the payment of such debts; he fulfilled his contract in good faith. These facts are all admitted by the bill which sets forth the agreement. But the imputation of fraud, which it is supposed will justify the interference of a court of equity, is the fact that the defendant and plaintiff differ in their construction of the intention and legal effect of that agreement. And the bill prays that the defendant may be enjoined from setting up his construction of it in a court of law, by way of defence to the plaintiffs’ claim. Much as this bill has been seasoned with the phrases “fraudulently, deceitfully,” &c.; this is, in fact, all the fraud imputed to the defendant. A court of equity, when examining a bill of complaint to find a grievance which will justify its interposition, looks to the substantive facts averred in it, not to the adjectives or adverbs which may be added to qualify them.
The case presented by the bill, stripped of all unnecessary epithets, is, in short this: The complainants obtained a judgment against the defendant some twenty-five years ago. The only property in possession of the defendant, from which the judgment could in whole or in part be satisfied, was that contained in his marriage settlement, and conveyed for the trusts of that settlement. Whether this settlement was fraudulent or void as against creditors, and this property liable to be taken in execution, was a doubtful question. No bankrupt law was then in existence, by which the defendant could be compelled to assign for the use of his creditors, and thus have the question tried. The plaintiffs, therefore, arrest his body on a ca. sa.; the defendant proposes to give them security for the value of all the property contained in the marriage settlement, and all other of which he was possessed, if they will release him; and if, on the trial of an issue for that purpose, the court shall decide that this settlement was void, as against creditors, then the whole amount to be applied to the satisfaction of the plaintiffs’ judgment.
By this contract the plaintiffs obtained a greater advantage than they could have expected from any general insolvent assignment. For if they had continued to hold the defendant’s body, he might have made an assignment with preferences, and after-wards obtained his discharge under the laws of the United States. But by this contract they obtained all, even if that all turned out to be nothing. The chance of setting aside the marriage settlement was considered a good one, and well worthy of pursuit; while the expectancy dependent on the chances of his surviving his wife, and failure of issue, was held of no account.
We can see nothing in this transaction tending to show, either that the plaintiffs were not fully aware of the legal effect of the arrest and voluntary discharge of the defendant, or that, after having obtained from defendant an assignment with security to deliver all his property to the sole use of the plaintiffs’ execution, they ever calculated on the probability or possibility that Thomson might thereafter acquire property, and be subject to future executions; or intended that this judgment should, notwithstanding his arrest and assignment, remain as an in-*476eubus upon all bis future struggles to amend bis fortunes. Content with the surrender of all the property within the power and control of the defendant, they did not covenant for his future earnings or possible acquisitions, nor for the renewed imprisonment of his body at their discretion. It is not usual to exact such hard bargains. It was a case of actual mercantile bankruptcy, without a technical discharge under a bankrupt law; and we see no reason to believe that either party, at the time of the contract, had any intention that there should be any future recourse to the judgment. They took, good security for the performance of the agreement which was the consideration of defendant’s release, knowing that such a release would operate as a legal satisfaction of their judgment. The transaction was bona fide, without any suspicion of deceit, misrepresentation, or fraud, on the part of defendant. Why, then, should equity interfere, if the judgment stands satisfied at law?
When a plaintiff has a valid legal judgment, equity may interfere as ancillary to a court of law, to enable the plaintiff to reach means of actual satisfaction, which were beyond the grasp of an execution. But where a judgment is satisfied at law', equity will not interfere, unless v'here this satisfaction has been obtained by fraud or deceit, or made under some mistake of fact. As the facts exhibited by this bill, when severed from the epithets and adjectives used in framing it, show a transaction of which these qualities cannot be predicated; the defendant seems to have supported the first proposition of the hypothesis stated in their demurrer, viz., that if the arrest and discharge of defendant has operated as a legal satisfaction of the judgment, the plaintiffs have shown no sufficient ground for the interference of a court of equity. The second proposition, that if the arrest and discharge had no such operation in law, then plaintiffs have full and adequate relief at law', is one which needs no argument; and, as a necessai-y corollary, this bill would have to be dismissed.
But as the question as to the legal effect of this arrest and discharge w'ill recur to us immediately, on the law side of the court, and as its decision cannot be avoided by leaving it to another tribunal; and, moreover, as it has been fully and ably argued by the learned counsel, it will be proper to notice it and state our conclusions.
The doctrines of law as laid dowm by Chief Justice Hobart, in Foster v. Jackson, Hob. 60, seem to have been sanctioned by the subsequent decisions in England and this country. Blumfield’s Case, 5 Coke, 86b, reported by Lord Coke, which preceded it, is noticed in that decision. The difference of opinion between the learned judges, Coke and Hobart, as expressed in these cases, seems to have caused the statute of 21 Jac. I. c. 24, which gives an execution against a defendant’s lands and goods, who has been arrested and .died in prison. The question in Blumfield’s Case arose, where the plaintiff had several judgments against joint and several debtors for the same debt. It was decided that the arrest and discharge of the-defendant in one judgment was not actual satisfaction of the debt so as to bar an execution on the other judgment. The distinction between actual satisfaction as regards other parties bound for the same debt, and the legal and quasi satisfaction as between the parties, by an arrest and discharge of the defendant, is admitted in the case of Foster v. Jackson. To this extent Blum-field’s Case has always been held as good law; but the other dicta and speculations of the learned reporter of that case cannot be received to affect the authority of the subsequent cases.
Without attempting to notice all the cases which are to be found in the more modern books of reports, the following may be stated as containing principles which have been universally admitted to be correct law, both in England and this country. They all proceed on the admitted axiom, that as between the parties, plaintiff and defendant, in the judgments, the arrest of the body of the defendant is legal satisfaction of the judgment, unless the party has been discharged by the act of God, or the act of law, without the plaintiff’s consent.
Thus, in Vigers v. Aldrich, 4 Burrows, 2483, and Jaques v. Withy, 1 Term R. 557, it is decided, that if a defendant has been taken in execution and discharged on an agreement, the judgment is satisfied, and the action must be on the agreement. Clark v. Clement, 6 Term R. 525, and Tanner v. Hague, 7 Term R. 420, confirm the same doctrine. In Blackburn v. Stupart, 2 East, 243, reported by East, where the defendant was discharged on his agreement that he should be liable to be taken in execution again, it was held that the defendant could not be twice held in execution on the same judgment.
The question in the Pennsylvania case of Sharpe v. Speckenagle, 3 Serg. & R. 463, was, whether a discharge of the principal under the bread act, operated such a satisfaction of the judgment as could be pleaded by the bail in an action on his recognisance; and it was decided that it did not, on two grounds: 1st. Because the surety in a collateral suit could only set up actual satisfaction; and 2dly. The act of assembly permitting the discharge of the -principal, provided that it should not acquit any other person bound for the debt.
This decision does not in the least deny the doctrine of the English case, Blackburn v. Stupart, already referred to and reported by East, but rather admits and affirms it. The other case, Jackson v. Knight, would, as a statement of common law doctrines, be somewhat anomalous; but this decision was after *477the common law had been changed by statute, which allows another execution where the “defendant is discharged at his own request.” The necessity for such a provision in the statute, is evidence of the state of the law antecedently.
If the plaintiffs in this case had exacted from the defendant, as the price of his discharge, not only an assignment of all his property, but also a covenant and ¿greement that the judgment should be considered as unsatisfied, and that his property and his body should be liable at any time thereafter to be seized in execution, we think it clear that this latter agreement would be treated at law as altogether void. The common law, while it gave the power to the creditor of seizing the body of his debtor in execution, discouraged the use of a power so liable to abuse. It treated such an arrest as the ul-tima ratio, the end of all executions on that judgment, and legal'satisfaction of it; and while it left the imprisoned debtor capable of making any contract for future payment, as a consideration for his discharge by the creditor, it gave such creditor no further remedy than he could obtain by an action on such contract. An agreement made by the debtor, under duress of imprisonment, by which he should be again liable to imprisonment on the same judgment, was contrary to the policy of the law, and void. He was not permitted, when once in duress, to bargain away his liberty.
It is very evident, also, that an executory agreement which may be made the consideration of the discharge, even though indorsed on the execution, or filed in the court, can neither be treated as a judgment nor recognisance, or as matter of record of any description; and if it be not under seal, the action on it will be as liable to be defeated by a plea of the statute of limitations, as it would be on any other simple contract.
Now, the argument for the plaintiffs in this case assumes that the agreement was intended to give the plaintiffs a right to issue further executions on this judgment; and, as we have seen, if such were its literal tenor, it would be void.. But we think it due to the plaintiffs to say, that a proper construction of this contract will vindicate them from the charge of exacting so hard a bargain from a debtor under duress of imprisonment, and more especially when the debt is one of suretyship only. Among mercantile men, if a debtor, and more especially a surety, surrenders all his present property to his creditors, it is not usual to exact a lien on his future acquisitions. This agreement, while it very properly demands, as the price of de fendant’s discharge, an assignment of all hh property, and security for its delivery, in case the issue as to the validity of the marriage settlement should be adjudged in fa-vour of plaintiffs, does not contain, in direct terms, any covenant that the arrest and discharge should not operate as satisfaction of the judgment, or that future executions might be issued on it. It merely states, in general terms, (what was no doubt a fact) that the agreement to release the defendant, was for his accommodation, and covenants that no “prejudice whatever should arise to the plaintiffs’ right by the defendant’s enlargement, or otherwise howsoever.”
Now, the very learned counsel for plaintiffs, who dictated this instrument, well knew that this arrest and voluntary discharge of the defendant operated hs a legal discharge of the judgment; and he knew, also, that a court 9f law would not regard any agreement for future execution made by a prisoner, as binding. He cannot, therefore, be presumed, by this very vague and indefinite language, to have intended what he was unwilling to express in plain terms, to wit, that the defendant having given good security for the delivery of all his property to plaintiff, as the price of his discharge, should nevertheless be liable to imprisonment the next day, or at any time thereafter. Yet such is the construction which it is now contended should be given to this language, a construction which makes the plaintiff take, and the defendant give, every thing for nothing.
What, then, may be supposed to have been intended by these words, “prejudice to the plaintiffs’ rights?” When lawyers covenant about judgments and executions, they do not usually seek out such ambiguous and general phrases to express their meaning. What were the plaintiffs’ “rights” which were the subject-matter of the contract? For to these must we look to ascertain the meaning of this clause. The right they contracted for, and for which they got security, was the application of all the property of defendant to their debt. Whether that all was much or little, cannot affect the case. They considered the marriage settlement as void; the chance of setting it aside valuable; and the chance, from the possibility of Thomson’s survivorship, without children of the marriage, as nothing. They accordingly agreed, that if the issue should be decided against them, the “property should be entirely discharged.” Knowing that the discharge of defendant operated as satisfaction of the judgment, they were anxious that the “rights” obtained by the contract as a consideration for it, should not be affected. The language used plainly indicates some uncertainty in the mind of the scrivener, whether the discharge might not be possibly set up as actual satisfaction of the debt, and not merely as technical satisfaction of the judgment. To guard against any such attempt to affect or injure the “rights” which were the subject of the contract, and guaranteed to plaintiffs by it ex majore cautela, was this language inserted in it. The words “otherwise, however,” mean anything or nothing, and only tend to show that there was some vague notion of a possible legal *478advantage which might be taken, and which the learned counsel could not foresee clearly, and thought might be excluded by these comprehensive terms.
[On appeal to the supreme court, the decree of this court was affirmed. 15 How. (56 U. S.) 281.]
The intelligent and honourable men who executed this agreement cannot be supposed incapable of expressing clearly their intention. Nor can we presume any intention to coerce the defendant into so hard a bargain, or conceal it under vague and ambiguous generalities, as a different construction of this agreement would import.
We are of opinion therefore: 1st. That the judgment against the defendant was legally satisfied by his arrest in execution and voluntary discharge. 2d. That this effect of his discharge was not affected nor intended so to be, by any thing contained in the agreement made on that occasion. 3d. That the bill shows no reason for setting aside this contract on the ground of fraud or mistake. 4th. That it is no part of the functions of a court of equity to enjoin a defendant from-setting up a legal and just defence in a court of law, under the allegation that it is a fraud for him to differ with the plaintiffs in their construction of his contract. The defendant has as good a right to impute fraud to the plaintiffs for the construction they put upon it. The court imputes it to neither party, but dismisses the bill with costs. Decree accordingly.