Court Opinion

ID: 4927823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2021-09-24 00:59:17.357306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:13:32.025627
License: Public Domain

The opinion of the Court was by
WhitmaN C. J.
Notice of the non-payment of the draft in this case could not have reached the defendants before the 16th or 17th day after its dishonor. Instead of sending it directly from St. John to Calais, by due course of mail, the plaintiffs seem to have preferred sending it to Eastport; and there to have it mailed for the defendants at Calais. This was on the 16th day after its dishonor in New York. The mail was five days in reaching Eastport from New York. This accounts for five days of the time. How it should happen that eleven days more were necessary to forward it from thence to St. John and back to Eastport does not appear. It does not seem, by the course of the mails between Eastport and St. John, that more than four or five days need be occupied in the transmission of a letter and the return of an answTer. It is true that the plaintiffs had a right to adopt a private conveyance for the receipt and transmission of notice. But it is clearly incumbent on them to show that due diligence was *289used. The evidence in the case is entirely silent as to how it should have happened that so much greater delay took place than we can see, from the evidence, to have been necessary. It was incumbent on the plaintiffs to have removed any reasonable doubts upon this point; and, not having done so, we think a nonsuit must be entered.