70 Ky. 474 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1870
delivered the opinion oe the court.
Greer drew his bill of exchange upon Caldwell for three thousand two hundred dollars, payable in four months, to his own order, at the Southern Bank at Smithland. Said bill, having been duly accepted, was indorsed by Williams and
The issues raised by Bennett are not so easily disposed of. The bill of exchange was drawn in Louisville and was payable in Smithland, and was therefore a domestic bill. The protest of the notary was unnecessary; and it is insisted that notice of such protest was not equivalent to notice of the dishonor of the bill, which in cases of domestic bills is indispensable.
The petition directly charges that the defendants had due notice of the protest of the bill, but is not explicit as to whether or not said notice conveyed the more important information that it had been dishonored by the failure of the acceptor to pay upon due presentation and demand. Bennett’s answer is equally unsatisfactory. He does not deny notice of the dishonor of the bill, but “denies that he had any legal notice of said bill of exchange having been protested in due time and as required by law.” It is in proof that the bill was in due time presented for payment; that it was dishonored, and was regularly protested for non-payment; and that notices of protest for non-payment were in due time mailed to all the parties to the same.
The difficulty is as to the proper construction to be placed upon this proof. We are referred to the case of Taylor v. The Bank of Illinois, 7 Monroe, 576. In that case it did not “ appear that the notice really apprised the defendants of the dishonor of the bill, but barely that a notary had protested it.” In this case the appellee was notified not only that the notary had protested the bill, but that its non-payment upon presentation and demand was the reason of such protest. No other rational construction can be placed upon the language of the witness Grant, who says that “on the 16th day of June, 1860, notices of protest for non-payment of said bill
The notices conveyed to the witness the information of the non-payment of the bill, and one of them was forwarded by him to the appellee. It is not required that the notice of the dishonor of the bill shall be set out in any particular form, nor is the party giving the same confined to the use of any specific language. And while it may have been wholly immaterial whether this bill was protested or not, yet inasmuch as it was done, and the notice of such protest gave to the appellee the information of its dishonor, he can not avoid the legal effect of the same, by reason of the fact that the protest itself and the notice of the same were superfluous and unnecessary.
We do not regard the cases of Whiting et al. v. Walker et al., 2 B. Monroe, and of the Bank of the United States v. Leathers, 10 B. Monroe, 64, as conflicting in the slightest degree with this conclusion. In the first of these, cases the question was as to the non-payment of the bill, and in the last as to the proper demand for payment; neither of which could be established by an unnecessary and unauthorized notarial protest; but in this case both the demand and non-payment are clearly established by the deposition of the notary.
We deem it unnecessary to decide whether or not appellants should have been required to prove that Salem was the nearest post-office to Bennett, or the office at which he usually received his mail. He does not deny that he did receive a notice, but says that he did not receive a legal notice. But if the notice mailed to him by the notary was, as this court bolds, a legal and sufficient notice of the dishonor of the
It is not within the power of this court to revise the action of the court below on account of its “failure” to dispose of the property embraced in the assignments of Greer, and of Greer and Caldwell. The appeal before us is prosecuted alone from the judgment of August 16, 1869, which merely settles the matters in controversy between the appellants upon the one side and Cobb and Bennett upon the other, and makes no disposition whatever of this property. In fact, so far as it appears from this record, the court below has never rendered a judgment nor made any final order concerning this property. Until some action is taken by that court, either disposing of or refusing to dispose of the same, it is not within the power of this court to take cognizance of the matter. Appeals lie to this court from the judgments or final orders of the Livingston Circuit Court, and not from its mere “failures” to act at the time parties may desire.
In our opinion this record presents no error warranting a reversal of the judgment of the court below; and the same is therefore affirmed upon both the appeal and cross-appeal.