Hess v. Dille

23 W. Va. 90, 1883 W. Va. LEXIS 10
CourtWest Virginia Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 8, 1883
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 23 W. Va. 90 (Hess v. Dille) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering West Virginia Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hess v. Dille, 23 W. Va. 90, 1883 W. Va. LEXIS 10 (W. Va. 1883).

Opinion

Snydee, Judge:

George C. Shafer by his trust-deed of November 2, 1873, specificially charged the said forty-five acres of land as security for the debt of one thousand and eighty dollars due from him to William Chesney, and by the subsequent conveyance of the land to Martin V. C. Brookover, the said Martin V. C. was by the terms of the deed to him made liable for one thousand dollars, the unpaid part of said debt and a vendor’s lien expressly retained to pay the said one thousand dollars. By this stipulation in the deed the said Martin V. 0. became primarily responsible to Chesney for said debt and the land in his hands was specifically and expressly charged with its payment. The debt was in fact, as between Shafer and said Martin Y. C. the debt of the latter with the former merely as security for him to Chesney. The debt being thus due from the said Martin Y. C. and its payment charged upon his land, he then entered into an an-augement with Mary E. Brookover to sell her said land and as a part of this arrangement the said MaryE. was to satisfy or assume the payment of said one thousand dollars to Chesney and have a credit for the same on the purchase-money agreed to be paid by her to said Martin Y. 0. for said lai)d. In pursuance of this ar-rangment, on February 1, 1875, she executed to Chesney her note for one thousand dollars and he surrendered to her said Shafer note. If the said Mary E. had not actually purchased said forty-five acres of land at the time she gave Chesney her note, the agreement for the purchase had then been made and the giving of said note and obtaining from Chesney the Shafer note was a part of the agreement made to effect said [95]*95purchase. The facts and circumstances disclosed by the record leave no doubt on my mind that the intent and purpose of all the parties, the said Martin Y. C., Mary E. and Chesney, were that the said Mary E. should become the purchaser of said land and as a part of the consideration of said purchase she was to assume the payment of said debt to Chesney which was a lien on the land and release the said Martin Y. C. from liability on account of said debt. That the said Mary E. was to make said debt her own; and that it was with this intent an d purpose that she substituted her note for the said Shafer note. This seems to be conceded by the counsel for the appellee, John A. Dille, for he says in his brief, “ doubtless when Mrs. Brookover gave her own note for the Shafer note it was in contemplation of the purchase of said land, and it is more than likely that the contract and arrangement with said Martin Y. 0. was made between the 1st February, 1875, when she got the Shafer note of Chesney and the date of the deed.” I do not think there is any room for controversy as to this fact. The giving of her note to Chesney for the' Shafer note and the purchase of the land by Mrs. Brookover were parts of one and the same transaction. The completion of one act depended on the accomplisment of the other. If, therefore, the giving of the new note by the said Mary E. was in contemplation of and dependent upon ■the purchase of the forty-five acres of land by her, as we thiuk the facts fully establish, it is entirely immaterial whether or not the two parts of the act were in fact perfected at the same time.' The essential matter is, did they exist at the same time ? If she gave the note in contemplation of and with the understanding that she was to purchase the land, then the subsequent purchase by Mrs. Brookover was in effect the same as if the two acts, the purchase and the giving of the note, had occurred at the same momeut. The effect of the transaction was, then, that Mrs. Brookover by giving her note and taking up the Shafer note accomplished the purchase of the land; that is, her purchase of the land either before or subsequent to that time by relation operated as a purchase at the date she gave the note. The fact that the deed bears a subsequent date does not prove that the purchase was not made before its date; but even if the pur[96]*96chase had not heen perfected until the date of the deed, still the note having been given in contemplation and upon the faith of the purchase, the subsequent purchase, so far as the act affected Chesney and the note given upon the condition of the purchase, had relation to and took effect from the time the new note was given and the old note surrendered. It may bo remarked herej that there is no evidence in the record to show when the Shafer note was in fact surrendered to Mrs. Brookover by Chesney. It may not have been surrendered until after the deed from Martin V. C. was made to said Mary E., or at the time the endorsement of September 16, 1875, was made on it by J. S. Brookover, the husband of said Mary E.

In this view, which, we think, is not only conceded by the counsel for the appellee, but fully sustained by the facts, the said Mary E. was, at the time she gave Chesney her note, the equitable owner of said forty-five acres of land and subsequently became the legal owner by a conveyance of the legal title to her from said Martin Y. C., that said note was given for a debt of one thousand dollars due to Chesney, which was an express lien on said land, and she obtained credit on her purchase from the said Martin Y. C. for the full amount of the debt she thus assumed to pay Chesney. She made the Shafer debt, for which her vendor, the said Martin Y. C., had made himself primarily responsible, her own debt. She became the owner of the land on which said debt was charged as an express lien, and the payer of said debt at the same time. It is not claimed that there was any express agreement that Chesney was to release his lien on said land, or that said lien was in fact released. On the contrary, the record show's that the lien -was not in fact released. How, excluding the parol testimony by which it was attempted to prove that it was expressly agreed the lien of Chesney should remain in force to secure the note of said Mary E., let us determine whether or not, as between Chesney and the said Mary E., the more act of substituting the note of said Mary E. for said Shafer note, without the release of the lien or any express agreement to release it, operated in law' as a release of Chesney’s lien on the land for said debt ?

The doctrine is well settled both in Yirginia and this [97]*97State, that the giving of a new note for a previous one which had become due, will not be regarded as an absolute extin-guishment or payment of the precedent note or pre-existing debt, unless it be so expressly agreed, whether the new note was that of one previously bound or of a stranger — Dunlap v. Shanklin, 10 W. Va. 662; Feamster v. Withrow, 12 Id. 611; Bantz v. Basnett, Id. 772; Bank v. Goode, 21 Id. 455, 465 and cases there cited.

Nor will the surrender of the old note, of itself, raise a presumption of an agreement to extinguish the debt by the giving of the new note; and especially will no such presumption arise where the creditor would thereby lose some security which he held when he took the new note — Bank v. Good, supra; 2 Dan. on Neg. lust. §§ 1266, 1267.

Where the new note is that of a third person, the surrender of the old note will be held to bq prima facie

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Bluebook (online)
23 W. Va. 90, 1883 W. Va. LEXIS 10, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hess-v-dille-wva-1883.