Chapman v. Pendleton
Chapman v. Pendleton
Opinion of the Court
This action is assumpsit for contribution under an alleged agreement of co-suretyship between the defendant and the testator of the plaintiff for the payment of the note of Eugene B. Pendleton, which note the plaintiff claims was afterwards endorsed by them pursuant to said agreement and was finally paid by her. The amount claimed by way of contribution is $2,384.23 and interest.
After nonsuit in the Common Pleas Division the plaintiff has brought her petition for a new trial based upon five grounds, the first four of which are exceptions to rulings made by the *574 justice presiding at the trial, and the fifth is a claim that the plaintiff did not have a full, fair, and impartial trial in said cause because of facts and circumstances set forth in her affidavit.
Such an agreement may be either oral or written, and if written might easily have been made by way of addition to their signatures on the note if they had so desired. As no suggestion is made that there was any such written agreement, the claim must be taken to refer to an oral agreement. In either casé, whether written or oral, as soon as the minds of the parties met the agreement was complete. It was an accomplished fact, a res gesta. It is said that events speaking for themselves through the instructive words and acts of the participants are parts of the res gestee) but that evidence of the acts and words of participants when narrating the events is mere hearsay.. Whar. Or. Ev. (9th ed.) § 262; Graves v. The People, etc., 18 Colo. 170; Havens v. Suburban Railway Co., 26 R. I. 48; Bouvier’s Law Die., Rawle’s Revision, “Res Gestes.”
We think that the presiding justice properly excluded declarations of the testator that were mere narratives of past events.
The second exception was to a ruling of the court that the following question to and answer of- the plaintiff were immaterial: “Did you after that stock was pledged, at your husband’s request, go and see one of the directors of the Niantic Bank and request him to see that J. M. Pendleton’s name was kept upon that note? Answer. Yes.”
We fail to discover the materiality of this testimony. As was said by Mr. Justice Douglas in Chapman v. Niantic National Bank, 26 R. I. 21, at p. 23: “The note never bound these parties as between themselves, and the obliteration of any or .all their names or the total destruction of the note would not *575 alter their relations to each other.” And later, referring to the plaintiff, he continued: “Her right to recover does not depend upon James M. Pendleton’s name continuing on the note, but on its having been put there under such an agreement; and the note is as good a piece of evidence with a line drawn through James M. Pendleton’s signature as before.”
The third exception was taken to a ruling of the court refusing to allow Henry S. Minor to testify that, after the stock was pledged, at the request of Asher H. Chapman and wife, he was asked, as director of the Niantic Bank, to see to it that J. M. Pendleton’s name was kept on that note. The foregoing remarks relating to the second exception will apply to this.
We find no error in this. The court might well have said, in addition, that to enlarge the liability of an endorser from that implied by law from the position of his signature on the note would require an express contract, for there can not well exist at the same time two inconsistent implications concerning the same subject-matter.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Lucy P. Chapman, Ex'x. v. James M. Pendleton.
- Status
- Published