EQUITY-POWER TO REFORM-EFFECT OF STATUTE OF FRAUDS

Authors

Abstract

The plaintiff made an oral contract to sell certain shares of stock to the defendant at a price of $1,160 a share, as a result of a telephone conversation. On the same day the plaintiff sent the defendant a written confirmation of the sale, in which the price of $1,060 a share was inserted by mistake. The New York Statute of Frauds makes such a contract unenforceable unless a note or memorandum thereof be in writing. Held, that although the parties intended to make a memorandum of the oral contract which they had made, the memorandum was of a contract which in fact was never made; hence no memorandum was ever made of the contract which the plaintiff seeks to enforce, and although equity may have power to reform a mistake in a written instrument constituting a jural act, yet it has no power to reform a memorandum which is intended to evidence an oral contract. Donald Friedman & Co., Inc., v. Newman, 255 N. Y. 340, 174 N.E. 703.

Recommended Citation

EQUITY-POWER TO REFORM-EFFECT OF STATUTE OF FRAUDS, 29 Mich. L. Rev. 1085 (1931).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol29/iss8/25