Nathan Clifford

“ Now certainly, neither in the Dearborn County Court case, nor in that in the Federal court in Indiana, was the bona fides of the bonds put in issue, contested, and determined. Both cases went off upon demurrer. The whole history is matter of record; and an examination of the records, and a comparison of them with the record in this suit, will show that this is as we here assert. The demurrer did not cover all the facts involved in this suit. A recital is not an averment or allegation. Now the plea of res judicata is a plea of estoppel, and requires the highest degree of certainty. ”

“ Apart, therefore, from their own demurrers, and solely by virtue of the plaintiffs' demurrer to their rejoinder, the defendants may go back and attack the plaintiffs' replications, but they can do so only as to defects of substance, as it is well settled that the rule applies only where the antecedent pleading is bad in substance, and that it does not extend to mere matters of form. ”

“ Coupons are written contracts for the payment of a definite sum of money, on a given day, and being drawn and executed in a form and mode for the very purpose that they may be separated from the bonds, it is held that they are negotiable, and that a suit may be maintained on them without the necessity of producing the bonds to which they were attached. [45] Interest, as a general rule, is due on a debt from the time that payment is unjustly refused, but a demand is not necessary on a bill or note payable on a given day. ”

“ Thompson, [39] is that a judgment in a former action is conclusive where the same cause of action was adjudicated between the same parties, or the same point was put in issue on the record and directly found by the verdict of a jury ”

“ Technical estoppels, as contended by the defendants, must be pleaded with great strictness, but when a former judgment is set up, in bar of an action, or as having determined the entire merits of the controversy, it is not required to be pleaded with any greater strictness than any other plea in bar, or any plea in avoidance of the matters alleged in the antecedent pleading of the opposite party. ”

“ So, where an importer and two sureties executed two bonds for duties, and the principal being insolvent, one of the sureties paid the whole amount and brought a suit against the other surety for contribution on the bond which first fell due, and was defeated, on a plea of release, by the obligee, with his own consent, the judgment was held in a subsequent suit for contribution for the amount paid on the other bond, to be a conclusive bar to the second claim, it appearing that both bonds were given at the same time, upon the same consideration, and as parts of one and the same transaction. ”

“ Second judgment set up in the replications, was rendered in the Circuit Court of the United States, in a suit on another set of the coupous attached to the same fifty bonds, and the declaration alleged that the defendants, by virtue of the power conferred in their charter, did lawfully and in due form execute and issue the bonds under the seal of the corporation, and that the plaintiffs, for a valuable consideration, became the legal holders and bearers of the same, and of the coupons thereto attached. ”