Jesse L. Blalock and John T. Howell,
plaintiffs in error, vs. John Phillips,
defendant in error. Case - From Fayette.
Brown, C.J. - Plaintiff in the Court below, sold to the defendants four bales of cotton while Confederate money was the currency and had a market value, and was to receive that currency in payment. Defendants delayed payment until after the Confederate armies had surrendered, when one of them, with knowledge of the surrender, visited the plaintiff at his residence in the country, and paid the debt in Confederate currency, at a time when plaintiff swears he had no knowledge of the surrender: Held, in such case, that it is a question proper for the jury to determine whether defendant practiced a fraud upon plaintiff by taking advantage of his ignorance, and misleading him and inducing him to receive the notes in payment when defendants knew they were in fact of no value by reason of the failure of the Confederacy.
2. If plaintiff was induced by fraud to take the notes, and they had ceased to have any market value when he learned the fact of the surrender, he was not bound to tender them back to defendant to enable him to maintain an action for the amount due him for the cotton.
3. The plaintiff in this case, waves the tort committed by the defendant in forcibly taking the cotton from his gin house, by the form of action brought; and can only proceed for the price of the cotton.
4. The conduct of certain jurors, who, while they were charged with the case, conversed with a person not on the jury, in presence of a number of others about the case, and used expressions favorable to the right of the plaintiff to recover-assigning as a reason that defendant, sworn as a witness, had contradicted himself, when in fact he had not, is highly reprehensible, and a new trial should have been granted by the Court below on that account. Jurors should speak to no one, nor permit anyone to speak to them about the case, while charged with its consideration.
Judgment Reversed.
Source: Southern Recorder, Milledgeville, Georgia, Tuesday, January 26, 1869; Pg. 1
