Published October 16, 2011
By Robert Cook
Quincy
has had its share of important legal cases. Among the most famous are the Dr.
Richard Eells case of 1843 and 1852 and the Pfanschmidt murder case of 1914.
In the Eells case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Fifth
Judicial Circuit Judge Stephen A. Douglas’s conviction of abolitionist Dr.
Eells, who in 1842 had tried to help a slave fleeing his Monticello, Mo.,
owner.
In the Pfanschmidt case, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld
the claim of Ray Pfanschmidt that he had been wrongly convicted of his sister’s
murder because of errors by the lower court in Adams County. He was found not guilty
when retried for his sister’s death and not guilty in a separate trial related
to the murder of his father.
The oldest Quincy case I have been able to find is John Wood
v. Peter Hynes. The case involved the concept of “holder in due course.” A
holder in due course is a person who in good faith has given value for a
negotiable instrument and thereby takes the instrument free of all claims. For
example, if a buyer gives a seller a check for an item, and the seller endorses
the check to a third party (the “holder in due course”), the buyer must honor
the check, even if the item is defective. The buyer may have a claim against
the seller, but not against the holder in due course.
Here’s an example of how it works.
Let’s say Mrs. Jones buys a $100 watch from Mr. Smith’s clock
shop. Mrs. Jones writes a check for $100 to Mr. Smith. Later that day one of
Mr. Smith’s suppliers, Mr. Wilson, stops by the clock shop. Mr. Wilson accepts
in good faith Mr. Smith’s offer to endorse Mrs. Jones’s $100 check over to
pay for some of the shop’s earlier purchases. At home later on Mrs. Jones
discovers the watch has stopped working.
Although she may have a claim against Mr. Smith for the faulty watch,
under the principle of “holder in due course” Mrs. Jones must honor the payment
of the $100 check that Mr. Smith endorsed over to Mr. Wilson. That’s because
her complaint would be with Mr. Smith, who sold her the watch, not Mr. Wilson,
who had accepted the check from Mr. Wilson in good faith.
In 1833 there were four Justices on the Illinois Supreme
Court. They didn’t just sit on the Supreme Court in Springfield.
They also rode the circuit, acting as trial judges in the
four circuit courts which made up the Illinois court system. In 1829, however,
a fifth circuit court was created comprising all of the state north and west of
the Illinois River, including Adams, Peoria and Jo Daviess Counties in the
northwest corner of the state. Judge Richard M. Young was appointed judge of
the fifth circuit, moving from Jonesboro to Quincy to better serve the new
circuit. Judge Young was only assigned trial court duties, apparently because
the fifth circuit was so remote from Springfield. One of Judge
Young’s first cases was Wood v. Hynes. David Wilkin “came to the
town of Quincy with a quantity of goods boxed up in boxes and
crates.”
Wilkin sold the goods to Hynes, who gave him a
promissory note dated October 18, 1831: “I promise to pay unto David
Wilkin or order, the sum of one thousand dollars.” The note was
witnessed by S.W. Rogers and Willard Keyes.
On Nov. 21, 1831, Wilkin endorsed the note to John Wood in St. Louis. Wood
filed suit when Hynes refused to pay.
Hynes’s attorney was J.W. Whitney. Whitney argued that
Wilkin, the seller, “represented himself in the town of Quincy to be a
religious man and a member of the Presbyterian Church, in consequence whereof
[Hynes] believed the said Wilkin to be an honest man, who would take no
advantage, and use no deception in trade.” Yet the said goods “were greatly and
scandalously inferior” in quality and quantity to what they were represented to
be “so that they were in nowise of value to the amount of the said note.”
Wood’s attorney was Archibald Williams, a friend of Abraham
Lincoln, whom Lincoln in 1861 appointed to the first U.S. District Court in Kansas.
Answering Whitney’s argument, Williams filed a demurrer, an old common law
pleading basically saying “so what?” Judge Young overruled the demurrer and a
trial was had that resulted in a verdict and judgment for Hynes. Wood appealed.
The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the decision of the trial
court. If there is fraud in the making or executing of the note, “the note
shall be void not only between the maker and payee, but also in the hands of
every subsequent holder.” That is not the case here. There is no “right to
interpose such a defense where there is a mere deficiency in the quality or
quantity of the article sold, as between the maker and the assignee.”
“The clerk of this Court will assess the damages on the note,
which is the interest, and render a judgment or the debt and damages so
computed, with the costs of this Court, and the Circuit Court of Adams County.”
As the “holder in due course” of Hynes’s promissory note, which Wilkins
endorsed over to Wood, who had accepted the note in good faith, Wood was
entitled to be paid.
The case reminded me of one I heard when I was assigned to
Courtroom 1112 in Cook County, Kedzie and 103rd Currency Exchange, Inc. v.
Hodge. Beulah Hodge hired a plumber and gave him a check for $500, but the
plumber never showed up. Beulah had her bank issue a stop-payment order, but
the plumber cashed the check at the Currency Exchange. The Currency Exchange
sued Beulah, alleging it was a holder in due course, an innocent purchaser like
John Wood.
Beulah’s lawyer argued that the Currency Exchange was not a
holder in due course, raising the defense of “illegality of the transaction”
because the plumber was not licensed as required by statute. I agreed with
Beulah, but the Supreme Court reversed.
Justice Michael Bilandic was the Supreme Court’s lone
dissenter and every time he saw me after that he would say, “You were right in
that Beulah Hodge case.” And I would respond, “You were right in that
Beulah Hodge case.”
Robert Cook, a longtime resident of Quincy, is a judge on the
Illinois Appellate Court in Springfield. He is a member of the Board of the
Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.
