52 Neb. 660 | Neb. | 1897
This action was brought in the district court of Buffalo county by numerous judgment creditors of Aaron Sands, against the said Aaron Sands, Eoss Gamble, and Allie Sands as defendants. It was alleged in the petition that from March 1, 1890, until' November 15, 1891, Aaron Sands had been engaged in business in Kearney as a retail dealer in ready-made clothing, furnishing goods, boots, shoes, etc.; that in pursuance of a fraudulent conspiracy, to which all the defendants were parties', the said Aaron Sands, upon the faith of a credit'secured largely by the recommendation of Eoss Gamble, president and man
The district court found that tbe value of tbe property described in tbe bill of sale at tbe date of its execution, November 14, 1891, was $26,000, and that tbe aggregate amount of tbe sums due from Aaron Sands to the plaintiffs at tbe date of tbe decree, July 3,1894, was $21,147.69. There was also a finding that Gamble, as part of tbe consideration for tbe transfer of tbe stock of goods to him, paid to tbe Buffalo County National Bank tbe sum of $10,100 as a bona fide debt at tbe time owing by Aaron Sands to said bank, and cancelled a bona fide debt at that time due from Sands to tbe bank of the amount of $663. As tbe interest on tbe amounts due from Sands to plaintiffs seems to have been included in tbe judgment against Gamble we cannot, without a full computation, make an exact comparison, but in general terms it will answer our purpose to say that tbe amount of that judgment,
The special circumstances on wMch plaintiffs, in oral argument, seemed to rely as indicating a common corrupt purpose between Ross Gamble and the Sands were, the improbability that between the Sands there had been suffered to accumulate an indebtedness of $6,500 for clerk-hire alone, and the lack of likelihood that Gamble should have advanced by way of loans the several amounts which he testified as a witness that he had advanced. Of these matters there was no attempt at contradiction. The plaintiffs, then, are in this situation: They have furnished evidence of transactions so unusual in their nature that we are expected to reject this evidence as being false upon its face. What now has been gained? As we have already intimated, plaintiffs are in no position to impeach the witnesses for whose credibility they have vouched in a certain sense by offering them as witnesses. No one has contradicted them, hence, if they are discredited, nothing has been gained by plaintiffs, because the ultimate inquiry in this case is not with reference to the truthfulness of these witnesses. It may be possible that they cannot speak the truth, and yet evidence of that fact would not alone be sufficient to justify the inference that a transaction in wMch they were interested as parties was necessarily fraudulent as to creditors of one of them. If the transaction testified to was so inherently improbable that we could not believe in its existence, we are simply brought to the point that with reference to the propositions to be established to entitle plaintiffs to a recovery there is no proof whateyer. If believed to any extent
As to whether or not Ro-ss Gamble was aware that
Reversed and remanded.