131 N.E. 905 | NY | 1921
Plaintiff sues upon a promissory note. Defendant answers that there was duress, and counterclaims for the recovery of payments already made. No question is before us in respect of the adequacy of the answer considered as a defense. The point to be determined is the validity of the counterclaim.
The substance of the counterclaim is this: The defendant's brother-in-law, one Bloch, was bankrupt and the plaintiff's debtor. The plaintiff informed the defendant that Bloch was guilty of criminal misappropriation of its funds, and threatened to arrest him and send him to prison unless it received the defendant's notes for the amount of the indebtedness. The defendant believed that the plaintiff would carry out its threats. The pressure thereby exerted overpowered and constrained his will. He executed the notes to save his brother-in-law from jail, and to save his sister, Bloch's wife, from the shame of her husband's disgrace, and the loss of her sole support. The note in suit is one of a series on which payments have been made. The defendant asks judgment that the payments be returned.
We think the defendant, if a victim of duress, was at the same time a wrongdoer when he stifled a charge of crime. In such circumstances the law will leave the parties where it finds them (Haynes v. Rudd,
The principle thus vindicated is simple and commanding. There is to be no traffic in the privilege of invoking the public justice of the state. One may press a charge or withhold it as one will. One may not make action or inaction dependent on a price (Jones v. Merionethshire Bldg. Society, 1892, 1 Ch. 173, 183). The state has, indeed, no interest to be promoted by the prosecution of the innocent (Steuben County Bank v.Mathewson, supra, at pp. 252, 253; Manning v. ColumbianLodge, *254 supra). That consideration, if it were controlling, is as applicable to agreements to discontinue as to agreements to abstain. The state has an interest, however, in preserving to complainants the freedom of choice, the incentives to sincerity, which are the safeguards and the assurance of the prosecution of the guilty (Gorham v. Keyes, supra; Partridge v. Hood,
We are urged in apportioning the blame to allot a heavier weight of guilt to the plaintiff who exacted than to the defendant who complied. The same argument was pressed in Haynes
v. Rudd (
The order should be affirmed, with costs, and the question certified answered in the negative.
HISCOCK, Ch. J., CHASE, HOGAN, POUND, McLAUGHLIN and ANDREWS, JJ., concur.
Order affirmed.