Morrill v. Nightingale

Garoutte, J. This is an action in equity to foreclose a contract and recover judgment upon four promissory notes amounting in the aggregate to forty-three thousand dollars. The contract and notes were made by defendant Nightingale to the plaintiffs on account of an alleged purchase of the capital stock of the Milwaukee Furniture Company. The prayer of the complaint asks that judgment be had for the amount of the notes, and that certain real estate and the said capital stock be applied to the satisfaction of such judgment, said property having been transferred under the contract to secure the payment of the aforesaid notes. Among other matters, the answer sets out that the contract and notes were not signed by the defendant Nightingale voluntarily, but under coercion and intimidation, by threatening defendant with arrest and imprisonment upon a warrant of arrest which the plaintiffs at the time induced Nightingale to believe had been issued. Judgment went for defendants, and this appeal is prosecuted from the judgment and order denying plaintiffs’ motion for a new trial.

The merits of this appeal are fully tested by a determination as to whether or not the findings support the judgment; for, after a careful consideration of the evidence,, we are satisfied that the following findings of fact made by the court are fully supported thereby: —

“ 1. That on the twenty-sixth day of May, 1890, the plaintiffs fraudulently and illegally procured to be issued by a justice of the peace of Los Angeles City township a warrant for the arrest of the defendant Nightingale, under the name of John Doe, for the purpose of coercing the defendant Nightingale to pay certain sums of money and sign contracts for the payment of money to plaintiffs, upon the claim by plaintiffs that defendant Nightingale had embezzled large sums of money from the Milwaukee Furniture Company, of which defendant Nightingale had been acting as treasurer.

“ 2. That such warrant was not procured for any lawful purpose or for the purpose of prosecuting or convicting the defendant Nightingale of any crime, but for the pur[455]pose of frightening and intimidating defendant Nightingale.”

“ 4. That on the ninth day of July, 1890, defendant Nightingale executed and delivered to the plaintiffs the contract and four promissory notes of that date, which are set forth in the complaint and supplemental complaint herein; but such contract and notes were not executed by the free or voluntary act of defendant Nightingale, but his signature and his execution thereof was induced solely by the well-grounded belief on the part of defendant Nightingale that, unless he signed them and each of them, he would be arrested and imprisoned upon said warrant for such embezzlement, which the plaintiffs then and previously charged him with being guilty of; and that by signing the same, the embezzlement with which he was so charged would be compromised and settled.