Acknowledgment of Debt Versus Claimed Repayment

An individual who signed a document acknowledging a debt, but subsequently claimed that the written acknowledgment did not reflect the true state of affairs because the debt had already been repaid, appealed a lower court ruling which upheld the validity of the written acknowledgment as proof of the debt's existence. The high court rejected the appeal, reasoning that a written acknowledgment of a debt, absent a clear demonstration of duress or error in its execution, constitutes incontrovertible proof of the debt's existence between the parties, and the signatory bore the burden of proving the debt's subsequent extinction, a burden which the mere assertion of repayment did not satisfy without further substantiation.