Lawrence

This appeal is taken under the alternative plan. It involves a typewritten transcript of 370 pages, one hundred typewritten pages of pleadings, including an original and four amended complaints, a cross-complaint and full complement of demurrers, motions, and answers, and represents the activities of several resourceful lawyers. In the final analysis, however, it seems to resolve itself into a simple action on the cross-complaint to recover on a promissory note, and an answer thereto setting up fraud in procuring the execution of the note, failure of consideration and denial of cross-complainants’ ownership of the note. The original action was abandoned. The judgment appealed from is on the cross-complaint in favor of the cross-defendant, Henry Lawrence, the maker of the note, under findings of the court to the effect that he executed the note in question, which was made payable to his own order, indorsed by himself, and delivered to the cross-complainants, S. H. Ward and R. H. Mullineaux, as agents of the M. M. & W. Syndicate, a corporation, which was not a party to the action. The court further found that the note was given without consideration, and without a meeting of the…