Alexander v. Righter

Citations

• 240 Pa. 22
• 87 A. 427
• 1913 Pa. LEXIS 624

Syllabus

<p>Contracts — Evidence—Consideration—Contemporaneous agreement — Settlement of accounts — Instruction to jury.</p> <p>1. Where there is a written unconditional promise to pay, in a suit thereon between the original parties, one may show a contemporaneous agreement that the promisee/would look to. a special fund for the payment where such agreement constituted a part of the consideration of the written contract or operated as an inducement for entering into it.</p> <p>2. Plaintiff brought an action upon an oral contract to recover the sum which he alleged defendants, his former partners, had agreed to pay him for his interest in the firm. Plaintiff’s evidence indicated an oral contract by the defendants to pay plaintiff the sum claimed. Defendants denied that any value had been placed upon plaintiff’s interest in the firm or that there was any unconditional promise to pay him anything for it, but alleged that plaintiff proposed to retire from the firm upon the delivery to him of a series of promissory notes, totaling the amount of his original contribution, and that this proposition was accepted with the distinct understanding that the notes were to be paid only out of the future profits earned by the business. It was an admitted fact in the ease that the plaintiff had originally brought suit on such promissory notes, but had proceeded no further with it after the defendants had filed an affidavit of defense. Held, (1) it was error for the court to exclude evidence to show that the notes had been given as claimed, and that the amount thereof was to be paid only out of the future profits of the firm; (2) it was error to refuse to allow the defendants to cross-examine the plaintiff concerning his reasons for instituting- a suit on the notes, instead of setting up in the first instance the alleged independent promise to pay.</p>