76 Mo. App. 242 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1898
“Linneüs, Mo., May 24th, 1893.
“Eight years after date, for value received, we promise to pay to the St. Louis Loan and Investment Co., or order, at its office in the city of St. Louis, the sum of Six Hundred Dollars, with interest at the rate of six per cent per annum. Interest payable in monthly instalments on the fifteenth day of each and every month. Each instalment of interest to be $3.00. This note is secured by deed of trust on real estate in Linneus, Missouri, $600.00.”
Plaintiffs filed their bill, claiming to have paid a great part of the note and offering to pay the balance found due on an accounting. The trial court found the issues for. plaintiffs by allowing certain payments as credits on the note and rendering judgment for defendant for the balance. Defendant appeals.
It appears that the note was for money borrowed of the association under the statute regulating such associations. And that the payments made were $9 per month. Three dollars of which was for interest as stipulated in the note; three dollars for premium in securing the loan and three dollars for payment on
Holding then that the note is subject to the same defenses and liable to have applied to it the same equities it would have been liable to in the hands of the original payee, we will ascertain if the payments made were usurious.
and, though they, added to the interest, 7 should aggregate more than a legal rate of interest, they would yet not be usurious under the special provisions of section 2814'. But in order to avoid, the infection of usury, the premium must be exacted in the manner authorized by the statute. The premium must be the result of bids for preference of loan at an open meeting of the directory under the terms of the statute. This matter we discussed in Brown v. Archer, 62 Mo. App. 277, and we content ourselves now with a reference to that case.
It may be that the trial court assumed that since the payments of $9 per month were made by plaintiffs, that they were made on the note.' This does not follow. Three dollars may have been made to apply as interest on the note, and the remaining six may have been made to apply on a lawful premium and a,payment on stock. Evidence should be had to show how this was. In the absence of evidence the comet was without a basis for finding the fact.
The judgment will be reversed and the cause remanded.