Court Opinion

ID: 9808438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:38:15.737421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:32.922797
License: Public Domain

Walicee, J.,
dissented upon the ground: 1. That there is no evidence of a mutual mistake, or any mistake, as understood in the law, by L. G. Fox, and certainly none by W. P. McRae, and therefore there was no mutual mistake, and the court should have granted the motion to nonsuit.
L. G. Fox signed the very endorsement he intended to sign, and did so not mistakenly, in the sense of a mistake in fact, but because he thought that, as T. T. Cole had the words “without recourse” in his endorsement, it would import the same words into his own endorsement. But in this he was mistaken, not in fact, but only in law, and that will *348not do; because, for one good reason, W. P. McRae did not participate even in that mistake. What L. Gr. Fox needed was a lawyer, when he would have had better advice than his own. Whoever has himself for his lawyer, is apt to have an unwise man for his client, is the old, old adage.
2. The charge of the court, based upon the defective evidence, was also erroneous, and necessarily so.
3. It is well settled that there must be a mutual mistake of the parties or the mistake of one induced by the fraud, surprise, etc., of the .other, which is not alleged here. White v. R. R., 110 N. C., 456; Day v. Day, 84 N. C., 408; Jones v. Warren, 134 N. C., 390; McMinn v. Patton, 92 N. C., 371, 374; Wilson v. Land Co., 77 N. C., 445; Britton v. Ins. Co., 165 N. C., 149, and more recently, Ray v. Patterson, 170 N. C., 226; Newton v. Clark, 174 N. C., 393. Where mistake alone is relied on, it must be both alleged and shown that it was a mutual one, and that the matter asked now to be supplied, or inserted, was omitted by reason of a mutual mistake. Ray v. Patterson, supra; Newton v. Clark, supra.