Opinion
(Spring Riding, 1806.)
Parol evidence cannot be received to explain the meaning of a written order delivered to a third person, especially as against that third person.
THE Assembly laid a tax for two years, to be collected each tax the years following that in which it was laid. Holiday was appointed sheriff in the first collection year, and received part of the taxes; he was appointed also for the second, but the time of payment of the tax had not arrived. Sheppard, who had undertaken the erection of the public buildings, applied for money, and the commissioners drew on the sheriff, directing him to pay to Sheppard the taxes collected or to be collected. Under this order, Holliday paid the taxes for both years. The commissioners allege that the words, to be collected, referred to the taxes then payable and not collected, and did not extend to the taxes of the second year. Counsel for the commissioners offered to give parol evidence that such was the meaning of the order; and he relied upon Peake's Evidence, pages 77, 78, where it is said an ambiguity, either latent or patent, may be explained by parol, where the thing which is the subject of the writing would pass without deed; and that is the present case, for a verbal order would have been of as much efficacy as this written one.
Whether the passage referred to be correct or not, I conceive the evidence offered cannot be received, for Holiday had not any knowledge of the contract between the commissioners and Sheppard, except what he derived from the inspection of the order. If the evidence be good to explain what the parties meant, as between themselves, it cannot be so as to third persons, who have governed themselves by the words used in the writing.
NOTE. — See Hawkins v. Hawkins, 4 N.C. 431; Clark v. McMillan, 4 N.C. 244; Donaldson v. Benton, 20 N.C. 435; Reynolds v. Magness, 24 N.C. 26.
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