55 Ky. 329 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1855
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Finnell, Kinkead, and Winston, commissioners appointed by the Kenton Circuit Court to close the affairs of the Kentucky Trust Company Bank, under the 3d section of an act to amend the charter of said bank, approved January 2, 1852, (Session Acts, 14,) brought this action by petition against Clark, the acceptor, Robbins, the drawer, and Mack and Payson, indorsers, of a bill of exchange for $7,321 40, dated at Cincinnati, October 6, 1854, payable thirty days after date, at the Mechanics’ Bank of New York, and addressed to Clark at the New England Bank, Boston, Massachusetts. Process upon the petition was served upon Robbins and Payson alone, but Mack united with them in filing an answer sworn to by these three, and a demurrer having been sustained to each paragraph of the answer, judgment was rendered against the defendants without naming them, for $7,321 40, with interest from the 6th day of November. 1854, and for seventy-five cents, the cost of protest, together with the costs of the suit.
From this judgment Clark, with the other defendants, has appealed; and it is objected that judgment was rendered against him without service of process or appearance. But according to the decisions of this court there is no judgment against Clark —the word defendants being understood to apply to those defendants only who had either appeared or been served with process. And there is nothing in the entries made in this case to repel or weaken this construction. There is therefore no error in this respect.
The error in the judgment of giving interest from the 6th instead of the 8th of November, if it be one, might have been corrected by motion in the Circuit Court. The date of the protest exhibited with the petition is the only evidence that three days, or any other number of days of grace are allowed in New York for the payment of bills. If it was erroneous
The material questions, however, arise on the demurrer to the answer. The first paragraph says the defendants do not owe, and ought not to pay, the amount of the bill, “for they do not admit the regular protest thereof, and notice, &c.,” as charged in the petition, and require proof, &e. This paragraph of the answer is clearly insufficient under the rule prescribed by the 2d and 3d clauses of section 125 of the Code. It neither sets forth new matter, as allowed by the 3d clause, nor contains a denial of any allegation contained in the petition, nor of any knowledge or information thereof sufficient to form a belief. That the defendants do not admit a certain fact, and call for proof, &c., is not a denial, nor sufn . i i /-H i . ,. ncient, under the Code, to put m issue a fact as to which the defendants might have knowledge or belief. The general statement that the defendants do not owe, when the petition merely states the facts from which indebtedness or liability is implied by law, is , . ' r . . no proper response to the petition, because it neither denies any allegation of fact, nor states any new matter constituting a defense. But if it were allowed to be good in analogy to the plea of nil debit or non assumpsit, it might authorize a defense to be made, in the evidence of which there was no indication in the answer. And the object of the Code is that the pleadings shall state facts, and not mere implications of law. The court, therefore, properly sustained the demurrer to the first paragraph of the answer, and for the same reasons it properly rejected the proposed amendment, which in form and substance was nothing but a plea of nil debit.
The 3d paragraph, so far as it claims a future set-off, is subject to substantially the same objections as the second; and so far as it asks for an injunction until a suit in another state shall be decided in order that the defendants may know whether they will have a claim against the bank, for its notes which they have passed into other hands, in the way of
We are of opinion that the demurrer to the third paragraph was properly sustained, and no sufficient answer having been offered it was proper to render judgment against the defendants.
Wherefore the judgment is affirmed.