Creditor v. Debtor: Promissory Note Certainty and Right to Offset

A lower court ruled that a debtor, who had made partial payments on an obligation evidenced by a promissory note, was entitled to enforce a statutory right to offset the remaining debt with a counterclaim arising from a separate contract, despite the creditor's claim that the note was an unliquidated debt in the context of the offset. The high court overturned this decision, reasoning that the promissory note, constituting an acknowledgment of a specific, determined sum owed, was a liquid and demandable debt immediately susceptible to offset, and the debtor could not use a pending, unliquidated claim from a separate transactional relationship to prevent the creditor from invoking the existing maturity and certainty of the note's principal for purposes of compensation.