25 Mo. App. 25 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1887
delivered the opinion of the court.
This action was commenced before a justice of the peace on an account for the sum of seventy-five dollars, claimed to be due from the defendant to the plaintiff for the making of a book-case by the latter for the former. The defendant set up before the justice, by way of counter-claim, that he, the defendant, had become the owner of a judgment for $61.25, including the costs, which had .been rendered in favor of one Warner against the plaintiff before a justice of the peace, and which had been assigned for value by Warner to the defendant. The justice disallowed this counter-claim and rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff upon his cause of action against the defendant, from which judgment the defendant appealed to the circuit court.
■ The cause was tried in the circuit court on an agreed statement of facts, from which it sufficiently appeared that the plaintiff’s cause of action against the defendant was just, and that the amount claimed 'was admitted to be due by the defendant but for the defendants counter claim; that, prior to the making of the bookcase for which the plaintiff brought this action, the defendant purchased, for the sum of five dollars, from his brother-in-law, Erastus H. Warner, the judgment which Warner had recovered as above stated, which
But the circuit court found against his counterclaim of $61.25, and rendered judgment against him for what remained due by him to the plaintiff for the making of the book-case, with interest, after deducting the counter-claim of $10.75, above stated. From this judgment the defendant appeals.
It sufficiently appears from the record that the sole purpose of the defendant in buying the judgment against the plaintiff from Warner, his brother-in-law, without informing the plaintiff that he was the owner of this judgment, was to collect the judgment of the plaintiff by using it as a set-off or counter-claim against the demand which would accrue in the plaintiff’s favor against him, the defendant, for the making of the bookcase. In other words, it was merely a device to collect Warner’s judgment from the plaintiff, by depriving the plaintiff of the benefit of the statute. The justice, and after him the circuit court, held that this device ought not to succeed and we are of the same opinion. The
It is true that the statute (Rev. Stat., sects. 2342, 2343) in terms exempts certain- personal property “ from attachment and execution,” and makes no reference to the case of a set-off or counter-claim. But the judg
The judgment of the circuit court is affirmed,