240 Pa. 470 | Pa. | 1913
Opinion bx
This was a feigned issue to determine the validity of a d. s. b. judgment entered upon a note given by. the defendant, a married woman, to the plaintiff. The defense at the trial was that the transaction in which the note was given was one of suretyship and came within the inhibition of Section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1893, P. L. 34.4, which prevents a married woman from becoming “accommodation endorser, maker, guarantor or surety for another.” The assignments of error are to the charge, on the grounds of insufficiency and incorrect statements of the law, to the refusal to enter judgment non obstante veredicto and to the exclusion of testimony.
At the trial, the defendant and her witnesses testified that the transaction in which the note was given was one in which she became surety for her son for money loaned to him and that she was to be held liable on the note only in the event of his failure to pay. The
The law. was correctly stated in the charge. While it has been uniformly decided that the liability of a married woman, on her contracts under the Act of 1893 is not to be determined alone by the form of the obligation into which she enters and inquiry may be made as to its. réal object and that it will be declared void notwithstanding its forra, if in fact it is a device to evade the
The offer of testimony that was overruled was that of a witness who was present when the note was given.' He was called after the plaintiff’s case in chief had closed and the defendant had presented her defense and the plaintiff had examined its witnesses in rebuttal. The witness was present during the whole trial and the offer was not in contradiction of new matter brought out by the plaintiff in rebuttal but of testimony that was cumulative merely and corroborative of the defendant and her witnesses. It was not error to overrule the offer.
The judgment is affirmed.