This action was brought June 5, 1880, by a national bank against the town of Bloomfield, in the state of Connecticut, upon three promissory notes, dated June 20, June 21, and July 1, 1879, and payable three months after date, for the aggregate sum of $19,433.30, and all alike in form, the first being as follows:
'HARTFORD, June 20, 1879. $5,500. Three months after date the town of Bloomfield promise to pay, to the order of S. J. Mills, fifty-five hundred dollars, at Charter Oak National Bank. Value received.
'S. J. MILLS, Treasurer.'
The answer denied that the defendant made the notes, or that Mills, as its treasurer, had authority to make them in its behalf.
A trial by jury was had, resulting in a verdict for the plaintiff in the full amount of the notes and interest; and a bill of exceptions was tendered by the defendant, and allowed by the court, so much of which as is material to be stated was as follows:
The town of Bloomfield was incorporated, in the usual manner of Connecticut towns, by a resolve of the legislature of Connecticut, in May, 1835, by which the inhabitants of the town, and their successors forever, residing therein, 'shall have and enjoy all the powers, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by other towns in this state.' It was admitted that Mills was elected treasurer of the town on October 5, 1868, and was re-elected annually, and acted as treasurer until July 16, 1879, when he resigned; and that he made and signed the notes in suit, and indorsed them to the plaintiff. The defendant objected to the admission of the notes in evidence, because the plaintiff had shown no authority from the defendant to Mills to borrow money or execute notes. But the court, against the defendant's objection and exception, admitted the notes, 'subject to the duty of the plaintiff to prove such authority.'
The plaintiff then offered in evidence a copy, certified by thet own clerk, February 16, 1877, of the record of this vote of the town: 'At an annual town meeting, legally warned and held at the usual place, October 5, 1868,-S. J. Mills, moderator; H. W. Rowley, assistant town clerk,-voted that hereafter the town treasurer be authorized and empowered to borrow money for the use of the town.' The defendant objected to the admission of this vote, because the plaintiff offered no evidence that the warning of that meeting specified any such object as was contained in the vote. It was admitted that the warning had not been recorded by the town clerk, and was not on file in his office. The court overruled the objection, and admitted the vote in evidence, 'not as showing a legal or valid vote of the town, but subject to the duty on the part of the plaintiff to prove that the town at its meetings, by its affirmative acts and conduct, had assented to and treated as authoritative the power of the treasurer under said vote to borrow money for the use of said town; or for the purpose of establishing that, by the course of conduct of the town in its town meeting, it had practically established the authority of the treasurer under said vote; and of establishing an estoppel in pais against the power of the town to treat as invalid a vote the validity of which had been affirmatively declared by its acts, if it should appear that the defendant had intentionally caused the plaintiff to believe in a state of facts which it now claims not to exist, and induced it to act on such belief.' To this ruling the defendant excepted.