Weed v. Evans

Citations

• 29 S.C.L. 232

Syllabus

<p>1. A debtor arrested under sundry writs of ca. sa. filed a schedule, gave notice, and applied for his discharge under the Insolvent Debtors’s Act. A suggestion was filed, shewing various grounds of opposition, upon which issue was joined. The defendant made certain payments within three months previous to his arrest. The circumstances, as developed by the testimony, being such, as in the opinion of the presiding Judge, excluded the possibility of intention to assign the whole estate to the prejudice of plaintiffs, the question was decided by the court as a matter of law, rather than embarrass the plaintiffs’s appeal, by a seeming submission of fact to the jury, when no fact was disputed. V erdict for the defendant.</p> <p>2. It was held, although the facts from which the intention was to be collected were plain, and although the plaintiffs might be less embarrassed in appealing from the decision of a judge, that an ascertained state of facts does not constitute undue preference, than from the general verdict of a jury; .yet, under the Act of 1788, the question of undue preference must be submitted to a jury.</p> <p>3. ■ No preference is undue, which is not fraudulent.</p> <p>4. Intention is a question for the jury ; there is no fixed principle or rule by which the court, as to it, can attain a conclusion for any statement of circumstances.</p> <p>5.On a question of this kind, the jury must regard their obligation to obey the law, and feel that every administration of law is both tyranical and unjust, where, in different cases, the same premises lead to different conclusions.</p>