Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/108

 The Law of the Land. for the note you buy. The maker may be a farmer who has been tricked into signing a note about some worthless patent fence or lightning-rod or new farming implement. He gave the note, you are an innocent holder for value, and he will have to pay it. The farmer may have given the note for value received; the payee may have returned a few days afterward and told the maker he desired a slightly different note. He suc ceeds in persuading the farmer to give him a second note upon the promise that he will return the original note early the follow ing morning. You may be the innocent holder of one of these notes, some one else of the other, and the farmer will Have to pay both of them. The maker may have had opportunities and power to ascertain with certainty the exact obligation he is assuming, yet chooses to rely upon the statement of the persons with whom he is dealing, and executes a negotiable instrument without reading or examining it. You become a buna fide holder for value of this paper. The maker is bound by his act, and will be estopped from claiming that he intended to sign an entirely different obligation, and that the statements upon which he relied were false. He could have found it out for himself before it was too late, but did not do it. He may be an old and feeble man, yet it will not help him if he had sense enough to know what he was doing when he signed the paper. You may discount negotiable paper very severely, but this of itself will not be evi dence of bad faith and affect your title to the paper. However, there is more or less risk about a tremendous shave; the court may submit this circumstance in connection with all the other facts to the jury for their determination as to your good faith. A two hundred and fifty dollar note bought for one hundred dollars stood fire. It has been said that from thirty to fifty, per cent discount may go through without question, if there are no other evidences of bad faith. But if

you happen to be a gambler and on intimate terms with the payee, travelled with him, knew that the payee could not possibly come honestly by a $2,500 note, which you pay him $1,850 for, you will likely have all these circumstances developed before a jury to try your bad faith. You are a bona fide holder of a paper without knowledge or notice of its character, and pay part of the agreed upon purchase money for it and promise the balance next week. Meanwhile you meet the maker, and unwittingly remark that you have bought his note and suppose it is all right. He tells you it is all wrong, it was obtained by fraudulent methods. You hurry up to pay the balance, and claim you are an innocent holder without notice or knowl edge of the character of the paper. Yes, only partly so; and you will learn to your sorrow, that you will be restricted to the recovery of the amount paid before your conversation with the maker, before notice of the character of the paper. All kinds of paper have been thrown on the commercial world beside tons of good, genuine, honest, value-received paper. A maker has signed that which he presumed to be a contract for an agency, on paper as large as a half sheet; and the part he signed is so that it could be detached, and when so detached is a note. Perfect promissory notes have been given with conditions, on margin or underneath, that destroyed their negotiability, but which could be easily separated, leaving the notes perfect, and no one could have any reason to suspect that any condition ever was a part of them. A maker buys Michigan wheat at fifteen dollars a bushel, and gives his note for it, and receives a highly embellished, gilded contract that the note is not negotiable, and that the crop of wheat from seed sold is tc be unloaded on some brother farmer at the same price. A maker signs negotiable notes in blank, and they are filled up afterward for larger amounts than he intended. All these had to pay for their experience when the