Opinion
11-09-1816
Johnson v. Hendley
Upon an appeal from a Deoree of the Superior Court of Chancery for the Richmond District, by which a Bill, exhibited by the Appellant against the Appellee, was dismissed on the ground, that in the Chancellor's opinion, " a Court of Law could clearly and without doubt adjust the matter in dispute."
The object of the Bill was to get relief against a fraud alleged by the complainant to have been perpetrated by the defendant, (who was his son-in-law) in writing an order, (which the complainant, not suspecting such fraud, signed without reading it) for the delivery to him of two negro men, whom the complainant had agreed to let him have on hire; the defendant, having (as the complainant averred) fraudulently inserted in the said order words, expressing that the Negroes were given to him. It was stated in the Bill that the defendant claimed the Negroes as his property, although he had paid off their hire, except a small balance, and had returned them at the end of the year to the complainant, whom he threatened to sue, for their services and detention, at the end of the year in which the Bill was filed. The complainant, being a very old man, was apprehensive that the defendant was only waiting for his death, thinking that he might, with greater probability of success, bring an action against his representatives to recover the said Negroes. He therefore brought this suit, to have the matter fully investigated in a Court of Equity; that the defendant might say, whether the Negroes in question were not hired to him, and not given? and that such relief might be granted as the nature of the case required.
The defendant by his answer denied the fraud; insisting that the Negroes were really given him by the complainant. A general Replication was filed, and many depositions were taken on both sides.
OPINION
In this Court, the following opinion and decree were pronounced, November 9th, 1816:
" The Court, not concurring in opinion with the Court of Chancery that this case is proper for the jurisdiction of a Court of law in exclusion of that of a Court of Equity, reverses the Decree, which on that ground dismisses the Bill; but, there being a great mass of testimony, exhibited in the case, the weight of which the Court is incompetent to decide on, without the intervention of a Jury, this Court, proceeding to give that Decree, which ought to have been rendered by the Court of Chancery, directs an issue to try whether the fraud, alleged, in the Bill to have been practised, and which is made the ground thereof, was perpetrated by the Appellee, or not."