Court Opinion

ID: 9811886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:32:15.789714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:19.812474
License: Public Domain

Davis, J.
dissenting: At the bottom of Earp’s note or bond, is the following:
“ I guarantee payment of the foregoing bond. Sept. 27th, 1881.
(Signed) “ D. W. Fuli.br.” [Seal]
There is only one promise to pay, and that is by Earp to Best. Earp is, unquestionably, the only principal to that obligation. Fuller guarantees the payment, and that, it is said, is a distinct undertaking — a special contract — to which he is principal. But the guarantee itself-is only for the payment of the debt which Earp, the principal, has promised to pay, and is not a primary obligation. Earp is principal to the thing guaranteed, and if you eliminate his promise, Fuller was promised to do nothing. He is not primarily liable for the debt. He is not the principal to any promise to pay money. He is not the principal in the one, and only one, “sealed instrument” promising to pay money, and if he Is to be held liable on a separate and independent contract or undertaking, then there was a collateral security, and, as insisted in the answer, as it was by Mr. Busbee in his argument, it was not assignable.
We are construing the instrument in view of a statute, which, it seems to me, was plainly intended to limit only the liability of the “principal” to a contract under seal to ten years, and to limit the liability of all persons secondarily liable, whether under seal or not, to three years. It seems to me that there was only one principal to the obligation to pay Best the $100, and that principal was Earp. I am not *332sure, that a guarantor is ever called a principal, as to the thing guaranteed to be done, and whether you call him guarantor or surety to the original and principal obligation, I think neither the spirit nor the letter of section 152, sub-sec. 2, of The Code, makes him “ principal thereto.”
Judge DANIEL says: “A guaranty is a promise to answer the payment of some debt,-or the performance of some duty, in case of the failure of another person who is himself, in the first instance, liable to such payment or performance.” Carpenter v. Wall, 4 D. & B., 144 I think this other person is everywhere, and in all cases, spoken of as the 'principal. I do not think a case can be found in which the guarantor for the payment of another is spoken of as principal. It is said that the contract of guaranty is co-extensive with that of the principal. The answer is, so is that of any other surety under seal, but for our statute — and it is that which makes the distinction between the limit of the liability of the principal and the person hound to answer for him — whether as surety or (I think) guarantor, for the judgment.
Baylus on Surety and Guaranty, throughout, speaks of the relation between the parties as surety and principal, guarantor and principal, and of contracts of guaranty and contracts of surety, and he also says, that “if the guaranty is made with one person it cannot be extended to another.” Sections 146, 113, 133, 147.
Would not Fuller, in an action against him and Best, or against him and Best’s assignee, be entitled to the benefits of §§ 2100 and 2101 of The Code ? Would he not have the right to show in what relation he stood to the parties, and that he was only surety for the payment of the $100, and that it was so understood by the parties? That he was not principal? Welfare v. Thompson, 83 N. C., 276; Lowder v. Noding, 8 Ired. Eq., 208. I think that in this case it sufficiently appears that the guarantor, as is often the case in single guaranties for the payment of money by another, is *333really a surety, and only a surety, for the principal; and if that were not the fair and necessary construction of the instrument, he would have a right to show that it' was so intended and so understood by the parties, and that he would have the right to show this by parol. Welfare v. Thompson, supra.
I think there was no error in the ruling of the Judge below.