Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1909 — SAGE WINS IN APPELATE COURT [ARTICLE]

SAGE WINS IN APPELATE COURT

Judgment Secured Against Him In Circuit Court Is Reversed. The case of the International Harvester Co., vs. Elizur Sage of Newton township, was reversed in the appellate court Monday. Several years ago, when Elizur was scratching a poor man's back, before he received his legacy from the estate of the noted New York millionaire, his uncle Russel Sage, he bought a binder and could not pay for it. He was then living up in the Gifford district, where a man is fortunate if he makes enough to pay his tobacco bills, to say nothing of buying and paying for a hundred and fifty dollar binder. He let the binder people have the machine back, but they hung on to the notes he had given for the deferred payments. After Elizur became a man of wealth and prominence • and # his paper was worth about 110, the binder folks thought they would collect these old notes, and suit was brought in the circuit court to recover the amount with accumulated interest.

A jury, after hearing all the evidence and carefully considering the circumstances, thought Ellzur ought to cough up $25, but answered a few Interrogatories that were put to them in a way not exactly coinciding with the general verdict. At least the plaintiff’s attorney thought they did not, and he succeeded in convincing the court that his clients should have more money on these Interrogatories. Consequently the court set aside the jury’s verdict and gave judgment for $125. Elizur did not want to give up so big a slice all at once of the cash he had been waiting a lifetime almost to have left to him, without a struggle, and appealed. The higher court thought he did right and reversed the decision, and now, we presume the $25 verdict will stand. In reversing the case the court held: “Where suit was brought on certain promissory notes for $l2B, being the face value less certain credits thereon and upon a showing that plaintiff had taken possession of a binder on which Jit held a chattel mortgage securing the notes, and

had sold it for >17.50 and credited >12.50 on the note, the jury returned a general verdict in plaintiff’s favor for >25, answers to interrogatories which stated only that defendant abandoned the mortgaged binder, that it was worth >4O, and defendant took possession and sold it as above stated, and that plaintiff received nothing else out of the mortgaged property entirely failed to state facts justifying a judgment in Plaintiff’s favor for >l2B, notwithstanding the verdict.”