Court Opinion

ID: 6991200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 03:25:17.694997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:09:37.206515
License: Public Domain

O. B. Smith, J., dissenting. I do not agree with either the argument or conclusions of the majority of the court in this case, but hold that the judgment of the court is neither supported by the facts nor the law in the case. I shall not enter upon a general discussion of the case, but content myself with a single observation or two. I hold that, under all the facts disclosed by the evidence in the case, the agreement of March 10, 1882, signed by Waterman and others, was, beyond all doubt, an original undertaking to pay the bank if it would ¡iart with the farmers’ notes which it held as collateral security, notwithstanding it is called a guaranty. The farmers’ notes were to be delivered to the Marsh Harvester Company for its own benefit, and the Marsh Harvester Company was but another name for the signers of the agreement, including Waterman. They were the chief and principal stockholders and owners of the failing and bankrupt Harvesting Company, and they were carrying on the business under the corporate name almost exclusively for their own use and benefit. It was a private affair, composed very largely of the parties to this agreement, who owned nearly all the stock. They borrowed the money from the bank for their own private benefit; they again induced the bank to give up its col-laterals for their own private benefit and to pay other debts. Three of these very men who signed this agreement—the two Marsh’s and Waterman—are the chief officers of this private corporation, controlling and managing it for themselves and their co-contractors and stockholders for their own private benefit, and these facts abundantly appear from the proof in the case. Instead, therefore, of Waterman and the other makers of this contract of August 10, 1882, being mere sureties or guarantors, they were the direct and almost exclusive beneficiaries of the notes procured from the hank, and the mere fact that they were doing business under the cloak of a private corporation instead of a firm where the stockholders and the partners were the identical same persons, can not deprive the transaction of its real character, nor change the fact that the men who made the contract were also the men who received nearly the entire consideration for its execution. It is a matter of no importance that the several packages of farmers’ notes these men secured from the bank by this contract were not worth their face. They were (on the face) worth more than the amount the Harvesting Company owed the bank, and formed an ample consideration for the execution of the contract. Considering, then, the relation of Waterman and the others (who signed the contract) to the private corporation and the bank, it seems to me to be a perversion of the use of language to say that these men were mere guarantors or volunteers, without valuable considerations and without a direct personal interest in the transaction, so as to entitle them to the consideration and protection which the law justly and wisely throws around those who are sureties and guarantors in fact and in truth, without any consideration for their undertaking. I have no controversy with the majority of the court as to what the law is in the many cases cited, holding that a real guarantor or surety in fact will be released by extensions of the principal debt, without their consent, for a valuable consideration, and especially so after the guarantor is dead, but I hold that such authorities have no relation or application to a case where the proof shows that the relation of guarantor or surety does not exist. Believing, as I do, that the contract of August 10, 1882, set out in the opinion of the court, is an original and independent undertaking, upon a sufficient and valuable consideration moving to the makers thereof, it is then wholly immaterial how many extensions the bank may have made of the original notes. It would not release a principal maker. The judgment of the court below was wrong, and ought to be reversed.