Nicholas's Ex'rs v. Tyler

First page of the opinion Nicholas's Ex'rs v. Tyler, in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia: With Select Cases, Relating Chiefly to Points of Practice, Decided by the Superior Court of Chancery for the Richmond District, by William Hening and William Munford. Flatbush (N.Y.) I. Riley, 1809.

In Nicholas's Ex'rs v. Tyler, 11 Va. (1 Hen. & M.) 331 (1807), the court determined the value of depreciation used to satisfy a pre-revolution bond.

Background

Robert Carter Nicholas was a trustee of Philip Johnson’s estate. Before the Revolution, an act of Assembly vested Johnson’s property’s causing Nicholas to sell the land and lend any remaining funds as the General Court should direct. In November 1771, Nicholas sold part of the property, consisting of houses and lots in Williamsburg, to Mann Page for £803 and took a bond for that sum. Page resold the land to John H. Norton for £600 who used Nicholas as his surety. A time later, a suit was filed to settle Johnson’s trust. The bond between Norton and Nicholas was devised to Tyler. On February 11, 1801, Nicholas gave Tyler a bond to satisfy the principal and interest. However, Tyler and Nicholas disagreed about the value of bond, particularly whether the scale of depreciation for the bond was liable to the scale of 1777.

The Court's Decision

Chancellor Wythe believed that Norton and Nicholas’s bond, though executed in 1777, was not liable to the scale of depreciation and decreed accordingly. The Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed.

See also

• Wythe's Judicial Career