Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States (Volume 5) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1887 Excerpt: ... The United States v. Briggs. cipal debtor for delay, or otherwise changing the nature of the contract, in order to discharge the surety, must be an agreement having a sufficient consideration to support it and be binding upon the parties. There is not one of the authorities above cited which does not more than cover the predicament presented by die case under consideration. Those authorities furnish examples of agreements, --arrangements between creditor and debtor, --situations from which something like hardship might possibly spring. In the present case, there is neither contract, arrrangement, nor even a scintilla of right, on which either law or equity can lay hold. The complainant, after permitting a judgment on the note, without attempting a defence at law, and after execution was levied upon the judgment, voluntarily united, in withdrawing the effects of his associate from the operation of that process, and by this very act bound himself with the force of a second judgment for the validity and for the satisfaction of the demand. After this course of conduct, he addresses himself to a court of equity, praying that court to undo all that he has voluntarily and deliberately performed, and in order to accomplish this end, he seeks to stamp his own acts with illegality from their very inception. For such purposes he surely would have no standing and receive no countenance in a court of equity, upon any of its known principles. We hold the decree, therefore, of the Circuit Court, dissolving the injunction awarded the complainant below, and dismissing his bill with costs, to be correct; and that decree is accordingly affirmed. Order. This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern Dis.