Oswald v. Jones
Oswald v. Jones
Opinion of the Court
The uncontradicted testimony in this case was that the husband of the appellee wished to borrow money from the appellant for the purpose of enabling him to engage in the hotel business. When he offered to give his wife as one of the sureties on his note, the appellant, knowing that she could not legally incur such liability, demurred, and his claim is that he then lent the money directly to her. The testimony conclusively shows that “The whole transaction was a transparent device adopted by the plaintiff and the husband, to evade an express statutory enactment: to create, by form, a liability, where by law none in fact existed. As she received no benefit, as the plaintiff was in no way deceived, she was under neither moral nor legal obligation to pay, and there should have been no verdict against her”: Patrick & Co. v. Smith, 165 Pa. 526.
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
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- Syllabus
- Contracts — Suretyship—Married woman — Wife surety for husband — Promissory note — Invalidity. In an action against a married woman to recover tbe amount of a promissory note of which she was maker, judgment was properly entered for the defendant non obstante veredicto where it appeared that defendant’s husband made application to the payee for a loan to enable him *to engage in a hotel business and offered his wife as surety, that the payee refused to make the loan in that form but made it directly to the wife, knowing the purpose for which it was to be applied; that the money was in fact invested in the husband’s business and the wife received no benefit from the transaction, and that plaintiff never dealt directly with her but exclusively with the husband.