Brown v. Southwestern Farm Mortgage Co.
Brown v. Southwestern Farm Mortgage Co.
Opinion of the Court
' The opinion of the court was delivered by
This action involves the right to the possession and ownership of three negotiable debenture bonds, each of the denomination of $1,000. The trial court adjudged that plaintiff owned and was entitled to the possession of them, and of this decision the defendant complains.
It appears that the Southwestern Mortgage Company, the Farmers State Bank, and the Home Savings & Loan Association, were all engaged in business in Emporia, and all maintained headquarters and conducted their business in the same building. Aside from the proximity of their headquarters, there was a close relationship in the interchange and management of the business conducted by them. E. J. Conklin was the president and manager of all three members of this family of corporations. The bonds in controversy, with certain others, were issued by the mortgage company, and on March 13, 1919, a sale was made of them by Conklin to the loan association, which deposited them in a compartment in the safe of the Farmers State Bank. About two and one-half months after the sale of the bonds to the loan association, Conklin unlawfully took the bonds from the safe of the bank and sold and delivered them to the plaintiff, who paid full consideration for them and took them without notice of the fraud of Conklin. About five months after the purchase by the plaintiff she became concerned about the safety of the bonds, which were being kept in her home, and took them to the
“Emporia, Kansas^ July 8, 1919.
“Received of Mrs. J. H. Brown, three $1000.00 mortagage bonds for safekeeping. (Signed) The Southwestern Mortgage Company,
By E. J. Conklin, President.’’
Soon afterwards these bonds so deposited were found back in the compartment of the safe in the Farmers State Bank from which they had been wrongfully taken by Conklin, and apparently had been returned and replaced in the compartment by him. In the early part of January, 1920, it was discovered that Conklin had become a defaulter, had wrecked the institutions with which he had been connected, and had become a fugitive from justice. In a search for the bonds which plaintiff had placed with the mortgage company for safe-keeping she learned that after Conklin had absconded the bank examiner found them among the assets of the loan association in the compartment where they had been placed by the loan association before they had been unlawfully extracted by Conklin and sold to the plaintiff. The loan association refused to deliver the bonds to plaintiff upon her demand, and following this the present action was brought.
To whom dó the bonds belong, is the question to be determined. It is conceded that the bonds were negotiable instruments, that plaintiff paid an adequate consideration for them, that she purchased them without knowledge of the wrongful abstraction of them by Conklin or of any circumstances that would put her on inquiry as to the validity of the transfer. It appears to be conceded, to'o, that plaintiff, having obtained them for a fair consideration and without notice of defects, she then acquired a good title to the bonds notwithstanding they had been stolen from defendant. It is contended, however, that in the replacement of the bonds in the safe from which they Avere extracted, the defendant not only gained possession of them by the surreptitious transfer but that the plaintiff was thereby divested of her acknowledged title and the ownership was shifted back to the defendant. The bonds having passed out of the ownership of defendant and the plaintiff having acquired a good title to them, did the regaining of possession by defendant in the manner stated revest the title in it? To accomplish this and make
There appears to be little direct authorityjjn the question presented. Voss v. Chamberlain, 139 Iowa, 569, had some features like those involved in the case under consideration. Some notes belonging to Chamberlain and Weatherbee were placed in a wallet in the bank of which Green was the owner. Green had no interest in the notes or right to the custody of them. He abstracted them from the wallet in which Chamberlain kept his private papers and pledged them to the Denison bank as security for his own indebtedness. Subsequently he obtained possession of the notes for the claimed purpose of selling or collecting interest on them as the agent of the Denison bank. Instead of doing that he returned and placed them in the Chamberlain wallet from which they had been taken. Neither Chamberlain nor Weatherbee had any knowledge that the notes had been abstracted and transferred to the Denison bank. The cashier
“If Green having possession of the notes indorsed in blank, had transferred them to an innocent holder for value, such transferee would no doubt have acquired rights prior to those of the Bank of Denison; but his surreptitious return of the notes to the wallet containing the papers of defendant Chamberlain did not invest the defendants with any other rights than those which they had prior to the abstraction of the notes from the wallet by Green and their delivery to the Bank of Denison. The return of the notes to Chamberlain's possession without his knowledge, and without his having parted with any new consideration or voluntarily incurring any detriment, did not make the defendants new holders for value in due course.” (p. 572.)
The defendant paid no new consideration for the bonds of plaintiff delivered to it, and must be held to have acquired them with notice of the fraudulent transfer and of the ownership of plaintiff, and hence is not holder for value in due course.
Judgment affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Mrs. J. H. Brown v. The Southwestern Farm Mortgage Company (The Home Savings and Loan Association, Appellant)
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published