Nathan Clifford

“ It is urged, however, that the drawee should accept but one part of a bill drawn in a set, and that that part, when so accepted, becomes the bill; that any third person seeing it has a right to presume it to be the only accepted part, and is justified in purchasing it without inquiring after the other parts; that by accepting all the parts, the drawee becomes liable as upon so many different bills. ”

“ Wallace, 571, the editors, in speaking of the fact that an acceptor is estopped to deny the genuineness of the bill as originally drawn, say that this estoppel 'is marked by much of the naked severity of circumstance and application which marked estoppels at commom law.' We cannot, however, see any peculiarity that distinguishes this, in principle, from other cases of estoppel in pais, or why it should be said to be marked with 'naked severity.' The drawee is reasonably presumed to know the handwriting of the drawer, who is his immediate correspondent. ”

“ To suppose, in this case, that the words 'second of exchange, first unpaid,' import knowledge to the plaintiff that the bills were drawn in sets, would be to give them an effect contrary to the averments of the defendants' pleas, as well as contrary to the admitted fact that they were not so drawn; and for those reasons the theory cannot be sustained. ”

“ They are substantially as follows: In June, 1857, the defendants, residents of Madison, in the State of Indiana, being desirous of procuring a loan of money, made their certain acceptances in writing of two blank bills of exchange, in sets of two parts to each bill, and transmitted the four blanks, thus accepted, to their correspondent, Lot. O. Reynolds, then and still residing at Pittsburgh, in the State of Pennsylvania. ”

“ All of the first class were perfected by the correspondent as bills of exchange of the first part, and were sold and negotiated by him at certain other banks in the city of Pittsburgh. He perfected them by procuring L. O. Reynolds & Son to become the drawers, addressed them to the defendants, endorsed them himself in blank, and procured another individual or firm to become the second endorser. ”

“ Chitty deduces it as an inference from an untenable legal proposition; Story, rejecting the proposition, perpetuates the inference; Byles repeats it on the authority of Holdsworth v. Hunter, an authority that condemns it ”

“ It may, however, be ranged with a class of cases perfectly familiar, which we all know to be applicable to a great many other subjects as well as bills of exchange, namely: that where one man by his negligence has enabled another to practice a fraud on a third party, which the third party has no means of defeating whatever, the consequence of that must be visited upon the individual who enables the other to practice the fraud.'
The same principle, designated as estoppel eo nomine, is defined as follows, by Lord Denman, in Pickard v. ”