Davison v. Davis

Citations

• 125 U.S. 90
• 8 S. Ct. 825
• 31 L. Ed. 635
• 1888 U.S. LEXIS 1917

Syllabus

<p>The payee of a promissory note gave to the promisor a receipt acknowledging it as given for the purchase of personal property to be delivered to the promisor on payment of his note. The note not being paid at maturity, the payee notified the promisor that he should not recognize his further claim to the property, and, -after a further lapse of time without hearing from.him, destroyed the note. Held, that the sale was conditional, not to be completed until payment of the note.</p> <p>The remedy by bill in equity to compel a specific performance of a contract to sell personal property upon' the payment of a promissory note given by the other party, payable at a date after the making of the contract, is lost through the laches of the complainant, if he wait live years after the maturity of the note before filing his bill, and the property meanwhile greatly increases in value.</p> <p>The court holds as the result of the transactions between the parties which are recited in its opinion, that, each being a holder of shares in a railroad company, they agreed that their respective interests should be joint and equal, and that the appellant should pay to the appellee the sum necessary to equalize the difference in cost between them; ancl that, this agreement not being carried out by the-appellant, the parties substituted a new agreement, based upon'the principal feature of the old one (that the appellee should sell to the appellant enough of his stock to make the holdings equal), but that each holding under the new- agreement was to be in severalty and free from conditions.</p>