Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/546

526 526 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. learning, for instance, that payment of the smallest sum the day before the debt matures, or at a different place, may be an accord and satisfaction of the largest debt. At the present day, too, Cumber v. Wane having been overruled,^ the debtor's own promise to pay five pounds, if in the form of a negotiable note, may be a satisfaction of a debt of one thousand pounds. Again, an unliqui- dated claim, however large, may be settled by the payment of any amount, however small. These limitations may be logically defensible. But the same can- not be said of the important class of cases, in which two or more creditors acting in concert compromise* with their debtor upon payment of a percentage of their claims. The application of the modern doctrine, as stated by Lord Ellenborough, in these cases threatened a result so alarmingly at variance with the needs of business men, that the courts declined to apply the doctrine. Such compromises have been deemed valid since the case of Good v. Cheeseman.^ The court professed to find a consideration for each creditor's promise to relinquish a part of his claim in the similar agreement of his fellow creditors. But it is obvious that in Eng- land, at least, the debtor could acquire no rights on a promise by virtue of a consideration that did not move from himself.^ The frank way of dealing with these cases is to say that they can be supported only upon Coke's view, that the payment of part of a debt is a good consideration for the creditor's promise to relinquish all claim to the rest* In l?is day, it is true, the only way in which 1 Sibree v. Tripp, 15 M. & W. 22; Goddard v. O'Brien, 9 Q. B. Div. 37; Wells v. Morrison, 91 Ind. 51; Jaffray v. Davis, 124 N. Y. 164 (semble); Mechanics' Bank V. Huston, II W. N. (Pa.) 389; Jaffray v. Crane, 50 Wis. 349. But see contra. Over- deer V. Wiley, 30 Ala. 769; Siddall v. Clark, 89 Cal. 321 ; Post v. First Bank, 138 111. 539 {semble); Jenness v. Lane, 26 Me. 475; Russ v. Hobbs, 61 N. H. 93; Hooker v. Hyde, 61 Wis. 204. 2 2 B. & Ad. 328; Boyd v. Hind, i H. & N, 938; Slater v. Jones, L. R. 8 Ex. 186, 193. The rule is the same in this country. Perkins v. Lockwood, 100 Mass. 249, 250; Bartlett v. Woodsworth Co. (N. H., 1898), 41 Atl. Rep. 264; White v. Kuntz, 107 N, Y. 518; Continental Bank v. McGeoch, 92 Wis. 286. an excellent criticism of the futile attempts that have been made to find in the cases of composition with creditors some other consideration than the partial payment of the debts due. my noble and learned friend that it would have been wiser and better if the resolution in Pinnel's case had never been come to, and there had been no occasion for the long list of decisions supporting composition with a creditor on the rather artificial consid- eration of the mutual consent of the creditors."
 * Professor Huffcut, in his edition of Anson's Law of Contract, 108, n. i, makes
 * Lord Fitzgerald said in Foakes v. Beer, 9 App. Cas. 605, 630 : " T concur with