81 NY 285 (1880)
Following the Civil War, the New York State courts heard substantial commercial litigation arising out of wartime contracts and other financial dealings.
The plaintiff in Clements v. Yturia was a New York City businessman who agreed to provide the Confederate government with “army stores” in exchange for 270 bales of cotton. Cotton was in very high demand in the north due to the Union’s naval blockade of Confederate shipping. In January 1865, with the Civil War still in progress, the plaintiff traveled to Texas to sample the bales of cotton before they were sent to the Mexican port of Matamoros in payment for the army stores which had previously been delivered to Confederate agents. The bales were marked with a symbol indicating the plaintiff’s ownership. In May 1865, before the bales were shipped to Matamoros, a Confederate officer in command of the region appropriated the cotton and transferred it to a local commercial firm which then sold and delivered the cotton to the defendant.
The plaintiff brought an action in trover, a common law cause of action which allows the original owner of personal property to recover the value of wrongfully taken property rather than to recover the property itself. The plaintiff’s action was dismissed by the trial court and the General Term of the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of dismissal.
Writing for a unanimous Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Folger held that it was unnecessary to reach the issue of trover because the plaintiff never had legal title to the cotton. The underlying contract was void from the outset because it was “grossly against public policy.”
It rests upon a contract made by him with the Confederate power; while that power was belligerent with the United States; while the plaintiff was a citizen of the latter; by which contract the cotton was the consideration for goods, contraband of war, furnished by him to the Confederate power. It was a contract grossly against public policy and void. Judicial aid will not be given to enforce such a contract, nor to maintain a claim that rests solely upon it. The proof of the contract, and that the cotton sued for was the subject-matter thereof, does not make out a right to take immediate possession of the property; for the contract is void, and of itself gives no right that the law will recognize.
The court did not specify the nature of the “army stores” but labeled them “contraband of war” which made the plaintiff’s contract with the Confederacy illegal and void.