247 F. 601 | N.D. Ga. | 1917
The case made here is: That the plaintiff gave to the defendant, on the 29th day of January, 1917, a note for $21,000, paying, at the same time, $5,500 in cash, and gave him an agreement to purchase certain stock of the Knox Hat Company. That afterwards, on the 1st day of March, she paid him $6,-000 on the $21,000 note. The plaintiff now claims that while she was sick in a hospital in New York, and in a serious condition physically, having undergone an operation, and in such mental condition, on account of her sickness and trouble, that she was not really responsible for her acts, she was overreached and unduly influenced by the defendant, her brother, into paying him the money and giving the note and agreement to purchase the stock.
The plaintiff and the defendant are brother and sister, and Edward M. Knox, the noted hatter, was their uncle, and the defendant Edward Knox Cook, was at one time made a legatee, and was to receive a share of Mr. Knox’s estate at ,the death of the latter, but the will was subsequently changed, and the defendant Cook was cut out entirely in the changed will; the plaintiff, Mrs. Florence Cook Bronson, remaining and continuing to be recognized by the will for a considerable
The effort here is to enjoin a suit on this note, which it is said will be brought in New York, and also a suit on the agreement to buy stock, and to have the note and the agreement to purchase stock brought into court and canceled and annulled, and that the plaintiff recover of the defendant the $5,500 which she paid him on the 29th of JanuarJ, and the $6,000 subsequently paid on the note on March 1, 1917. I think, if the defendant brings a suit on the note and the agreement to purchase stock, everything set up here by Mrs. Bronson can be set up and pleaded as a defense to such suit in a court of law.
Under the Judiciary Act of 1789, if a right asserted is one in which a court of law can grant as “plain, adequate and complete relief as the holder of the right is entitled to, without the aid of a court of equity, the person asserting such right must proceed in a court of law.” Buzard v. Houston, 119 U. S. 347, 7 Sup. Ct. 249, 30 L. Ed. 451, and cases cited by Mr. Justice Gray, delivéring the opinion. When suit is brought on the note and the contract to purchase the stock, in question here, certainly Mrs. Bronson can set up everything she has brought forward here, in defense to those suits. See, also, Insurance Co. v. Bailey, 13 Wall. 616, 20 L. Ed. 501; and also, on this subject, see the very interesting case of Niagara Fire Ins. Co. v. Adams, 198 Fed. 822, 117 C. C. A. 464, and especially the discussion by Circuit Judge Putnam in delivering the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; also see Cable v. United States Life Ins. Co., 191 U. S. 288, and in the opinion by Mr. Justice Peckham, at page 309, 24 Sup. Ct. 74, 48 L. Ed. 188.
For the reason stated, that it is not a case in which a court of equity should take jurisdiction, a decree may be taken dismissing the petition.