Hobson v. Hassett

Belcher, C. C. This action was brought to recover the amount due on a promissory note which reads as follows:—

“September 7, 1881. “$1,135. One day after date, without grace, we promise to pay A. D. Hobson or order the sum of eleven hundred and thirty-five dollars, payable only in gold coin of the government of the United States, for value received, with interest thereon in like gold coin, at the rate of ten per cent per year from date until paid. “A. Hassett, President.”

The court below found that prior to the year 1878, the Grangers’ Business Association of Healdsburg was duly organized as a corporation, and has existed as such ever since; that on the eighth day of January, 1878, the said corporation became indebted to the plaintiff in the [204]sum of two thousand dollars, and on that day made and delivered its promissory note to plaintiff for that amount; that on the seventh day of September, 1881, plaintiff presented this note to one Bagge, who was the book-keeper and accountant of the corporation, for payment, and requested that the corporation pay him nine hundred dollars in cash, and give him a new note for the balance; that defendant Hassett was president of the corporation at that time; that Bagge paid the nine hundred dollars, and drew a new note for the balance, and requested defendant, as president of the corporation, to sign it, which defendant intended to do, but signed only his own name, adding thereto the word “president”; that the note so executed is the note set out in the complaint; that defendant and Bagge only intended to make and deliver the note of the corporation, and did not then or at any other time say or do anything to lead plaintiff to believe that defendant intended to make or deliver his own note, and not the note of the corporation; that plaintiff could not read writing, and did not at the time know in what manner the note was executed, but at the end of every month, for eighteen months thereafter, he presented it, and received from the corporation the interest due thereon, and never claimed or demanded from defendant the payment thereof prior to the bringing of this action.

Upon these facts the court found, as a conclusion of law, that the note was the note of defendant, and not of the corporation, and thereupon judgment was entered in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant appealed, and the case comes here on the judgment roll.

The principal contention of the appellant is, that the note was the note of the corporation, and not of the defendant, and that the court erred in its conclusions of law to the contrary.