Benjamin N. Cardozo

“ Before the days of equitable defenses no one would have insisted that a suitor who refused to file a bill in chancery could be sent there against his will. The only penalty for refusing to go would be the loss of any remedy peculiar to a court of equity. There is no other penalty now after the reforms of the Judicial Code. The defendant, setting up a legal defense, the bar of a release, would have us force upon the plaintiff an equitable replication which the plaintiff disavows. ”

“ A release under seal is a good defense at law, unless its effect is overcome by new matter in avoidance. This will happen, for illustration, when it is so much a part of an illegal transaction as to be void in its inception. If it is subject to that taint, a court of law is competent to put it out of the way. We assume that a like competence exists in other circumstances. True there are times when a release, unassailable at law, is voidable in equity, and in equity only. If the plaintiff were demanding relief upon that basis, the equitable issue would have to be disposed of at the beginning. ”

“ Liberty Oil Co. v. Condon National Bank, 260 U.S. 235, 242, 43 S.Ct. 118, 67 L.Ed. 232; Enelow v. New York Life Insurance Co., 293 U.S. 379, 383, 55 S.Ct. 310, 79 L.Ed. 440; Adamos v. New York Life Insurance Co., 293 U.S. 386, 55 S.Ct. ”