Hart v. Stevens

112 F.2d 934, 1940 U.S. App. LEXIS 4453
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJune 6, 1940
DocketNo. 7223
StatusPublished

This text of 112 F.2d 934 (Hart v. Stevens) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hart v. Stevens, 112 F.2d 934, 1940 U.S. App. LEXIS 4453 (3d Cir. 1940).

Opinion

JONES, Circuit Judge.

The sole question in this case is whether the appellee, a married woman, was an accommodation endorser, and therefore not liable under applicable local law, for an indebtedness evidenced by the note whereon the appellant brought suit in the court below.

The appellee made her promissory note to the order of herself which she endorsed and delivered to the Union National Bank, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, for value received. The note was not paid at maturity although demand was duly made. Thereafter, it came into the possession of the appellant receiver as an asset of the bank.

After certain payments had been made on account of the note, the receiver instituted suit in the district court for the balance due with interest. The trial court held that the appellee, being a married woman, was not liable under applicable local law for a portion of the note indebtedness on the ground that, to such extent, she was an accommodation endorser for another under circumstances which we shall detail in essential part.

James S. McAnulty, the father of the appellee, died in 1926, obligated to the Union National Bank of Scranton, Pennsylvania, upon various collateral notes. By his will the decedent devised and bequeathed his entire net estate to the ap-pellee, whom he also appointed executrix of his will.

Following McAnulty’s death, certain of his notes at the Union National Bank were paid off or reduced by payments on account and new notes of the Estate of J. S. McAnulty, Deceased, by Anna McAnulty [936]*936Stevens, Executrix, were given to the bank for the remaining unpaid McAnulty notes. The collateral to the McAnulty notes was retained by the bank as security for the payment of the new notes.

In 1927, after the liability of the estate upon the notes thus given had been further reduced, the appellee gave the bank her personal notes in exchange for the estate notes. The collateral to the estate notes was thereupon transferred to the name of the appellee as owner and was held by the bank as security for the payment of the notes given by the appellee individually. Subsequently, the appellee paid off some of these notes and made substantial payments on account of the others, receiving from the bank at the time of such payments a return of collateral. By October 1930, when the appellee’s indebtedness for the unpaid balance of these notes amounted to $17,000 of principal, she gave the bank three new collateral notes signed by herself individually in substitution for her prior notes and as evidence of the current indebtedness.

In addition to these notes, the appellee was obligated to the bank upon other notes which she had negotiated in futherance of personal transactions. Later, and at a time when her note obligations to the bank exclusive of the notes for $17,000 amounted to $47,860, the appellee gave the bank a new note for $64,860 in exchange for all of her notes then held by the bank including the notes for $17,000. On January 8, 1934, the appellee lifted the $64,860 note by giving the bank two notes, one for $30,344, being the note now in suit, and the other for $34,516, which the bank later sold to another bank and which is not here involved.

The foregoing traces the McAnulty estate portion of the appellee’s obligations to the bank. It may be noted in passing that, ■so far as the competent evidence in the record discloses, the bank did not participate .as a creditor in the distribution of the assets of the McAnulty estate. This was expressly confirmed by the admission of counsel for the appellee at the argument of this appeal.

The trial court ruled that the appellee was an accommodation endorser for her father to the extent of 17,000/64,860 of the face of the note in suit or to the amount of $8,018.92. It had been stipulated of record that the total balance due upon the note in suit on March 28, 1939, the date of trial, was $15,964.14. Thereupon, the trial judge affirmed the defendant’s request for instructions and directed the jury to return a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $7,927.22, being the amount of the appellee’s admitted liability, with interest thereon from March 28, 1939. The plaintiff’s point for binding instructions for his claim in full with interest was reserved at trial and was later denied by the court. The plaintiff took the present appeal from the judgment on the directed verdict.

We are of the opinion that the action of the trial court was error and that a verdict for the plaintiff for the full amount of his claim with interest should have been directed under the admitted or undisputed facts appearing of record.

Without objection from the defendant appellee, the appellant proved his capacity as receiver of the bank, the appellee’s execution of the note, the bank’s ownership thereof and the balance due thereon. Thus, the plaintiff made out a prima facie case. Newtown Title & Trust Co. v. Underwood, 317 Pa. 212, 177 A. 27. If, therefore, the appellee was to be relieved of liability for a part of the indebtedness on the ground that her note to such extent was inhibited by the Pennsylvania statute,1 the burden was upon her to prove affirmatively that the note represented her accommodation endorsement for another. York Trust Co. v. Vandersloot, 334 Pa. 591, 592, 6 A.2d 498; McKean v. Enburg, 325 Pa. 456, 188 A. 835; Frankford Trust Co. v, Wszolek, 320 Pa. 437, 183 A. 52; Southwestern National Bank v. Leibowitz, 320 Pa. 410, 182 A. 695; Yeany v. Shannon, 256 Pa. 135, 139, 100 A. 527; Farmers’ & Merchants’ Bank v. Donnelly, 247 Pa. 518, 521, 93.A. 761; Bank v. Poore, 231 Pa. 362, 365, 80 A. 525; and Homer B. & L. [937]*937Ass’n v. Noble, 120 Pa.Super. 153, 155, 181 A. 848. The Pennsylvania rule is succinctly stated in Bank v. Poore, supra, where the State Supreme Court said at page 365 of 231 Pa., at page 526 of 80 A., — “A note or other obligation given by a married woman is now presumed to be valid, and, if she alleges that it is invalid, the burden is upon her to show that it comes within the exceptions to her right to contract made in the statute”.

The appellee in the instant ease failed to sustain her burden. Instead of proving that the note in suit was given as an accommodation for another, the facts which she introduced at trial showed conclusively that she had given the note in relief of validly encumbered property whereof she was then the owner. In no permissible view was she an accommodation endorser for another. The only one the appellee accommodated by individually assuming the liability to the bank was herself as the beneficiary of her father’s estate. Whatever benefit was to be derived from the note in protecting the collateral held by the bank or by relieving from liability the father’s estate in general inured directly and solely to the appellee. In Kirby v. Kirby, 248 Pa. 117, 119, 93 A. 874, where a widow and her son were the beneficiaries of the deceased husband’s estate, their oral promise to pay a note creditor of the decedent was held not to be within the Statute of Frauds because “they [the widow and son] had an interest of their own in the transaction [preventing suit against the estate], and their promise to him [the note creditor] was to stibserve a purpose of their own”. Likewise, the appellee’s purpose in the instant case would have supported an oral promise to pay the estate’s indebtedness without the use of a note.

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Bluebook (online)
112 F.2d 934, 1940 U.S. App. LEXIS 4453, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hart-v-stevens-ca3-1940.