64 Mo. App. 179 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1895
The action is replevin to recover the possession of certain household furniture. The defendants gave a forthcoming bond, and retained the property. The plaintiff claimed under a chattel mortgage, executed by the defendants to secure the payment of a negotiable note in favor of the Collateral Loan Com
At the request of the plaintiff the court gave the following instruction:
“The court declares the law to be that, if the court finds from the evidence that the plaintiff in this case is an innocent bona fide purchaser for value before maturity of the note read in evidence, then the plaintiff holds the mortgage securing said note, and read in evidence, upon the same terms and conditions as he holds the note, and the court will disregard all evidence as to the consideration of the note read in evidence, and will disregard all testimony of the rate of interest or amount paid on the indebtedness evidenced by said note, and secured by said chattel mortgage.”
“The court declares the law to be.that, und<3r the law and the evidence in this case, the finding of the court must be in favor of the plaintiff.”
Thereupon the cause was submitted, and the court, at the request of the plaintiff, made the following findings of fact and its conclusion of law thereon, to wit:
“The following may be taken as the finding of facts, as requested by the plaintiff, under section 2135 of the Revised Statutes, and the declarations of law under which the judgment is rendered.
“The mortgage note in question was payable in installments, and, at the time it came into the hands and ownership of the plaintiff, five of the installments were past the dates of their respective maturities anil two of them were unpaid, and for that reason the note was dishonored and the plaintiff was not an innocent^ indorsee thereof for value before maturity, and took the notes and security subject to the same equities that existed against it in the hands of the indorser. The court is satisfied from the evidence that the transaction between the Collateral Loan Company and John W. Staley and the defendants, whereby a certain portion of the money nominally borrowed by defendants from, the loan company was apparently paid by that company to John W. Staley as for services purporting to have been rendered by him for defendants, was but a device to mask the real transaction between the parties, which was the taking of usurious interest by the loan company from defendants in violation of the ' statute law of this state; that usury was thereby exacted from defendants, and, therefore, the security given by the chattel mortgage in question became void and of no effect.
“The evidence shows that the manner of doing business, as this transaction was conducted, was*183 adopted after the act of April 21, 1891, in reference to usurious interest went into effect, and it appears to fit every phase of that statute so minutely that it is impossible to believe otherwise than that it was contrived to evade the law.
“Buies of evidence like all other rules of law are adapted to our common sense. There is nothing in the law of evidence so technical as to require the trier of fact in a law suit to reach a conclusion which his judgment as an individual repudiates, or, as has been said by a learned judge, one can not believe as a man and doubt as a juror. It is as logical to reason the cause from the effect, as it is to reason the effect from the cause. The fact that this mode of doing business offers such a complete method of evading the law, and the fact that it was adopted soon after the law went into effect, are facts in strong evidence that the one was made for the other.
“This does not mean that the witnesses for the plaintiff testified falsely when they undertook to give the details of this transaction. They doubtless told exactly what occurred, and yet everything was so apt, and such an effective foil to every point of the statute, that it forces the conviction that each acted his part according to a well arranged program and with an eye on the act of April 21, 1891. Such acting does not deceive anybody else, and there is no reason why it should deceive courts.
“Judgment for defendants for possession of property and one cent damages.”
It is insisted that the inquiry into the consideration of the note ought not to have been permitted, since there was no evidence tending to impeach the position of the plaintiff as a bona fide holder without notice. This position is not tenable. There was evidence tending to prove, and the circuit court so found, that,
Lastly, complaint is made that the findings of fact and the conclusions of law are not made separately as required by section 2135 of the Revised Statutes of 1889. The section reads: “Upon the trial of a question of fact by the court, it shall not be necessary for the court to state its findings, except generally, unless one of the parties thereto request it with a view of excepting to the decision of the court upon the questions of law or equity arising in the case, in which case the court shall state in writing the conclusions of fact found separate from the conclusions of law.” The findings of the court were informal, in that the stater ment of the facts found and the conclusions of law thereon were not separately stated. A similar statute was enacted in 1849 (Sess. Acts, 1849, p. 90), but was dropped out of the revision of 1855. The law was reenacted in-its present form in 1889. Construing the act of 1849, the supreme court held in the case of Smith v. Harris, 43 Mo. 557, that the statute contemplated that a finding of the facts should first be made, which should be followed by the conclusions of law thereon. But the court ruled that, if all the material facts are fully found and the judgment given is the necessary result of such facts, the judgment will not be disturbed by reason of the fact that the conclusions of law and fact are not so separately stated. In the case at bar two leading facts were found, that is, that, at the time the plaintiff purchased the note, two installments were overdue and unpaid, and, further, that the Collateral Loan Company had received and exacted from the defendants usurious interest on the indebtedness. "With these findings other inquiries of fact became immaterial,
Finding no error in the record, the judgment of the circuit court will be affirmed.