MacDonald v. Gessler
MacDonald v. Gessler
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
This suit was brought upon duebill given by appellant to appellee and the defense was that it was given in a gambling transaction. In the trial below the court rejected appellant’s offer to prove that he had not intended to pay outright for the stock and that in his dealings with the appellee he never paid full price for the stock or received any certificates therefor, and these rulings were assigned for error.
As it takes two parties to make a bargain, so it takes two intentions to make a gambling transaction. The offer was to prove that the appellant himself did not intend to pay outright for the stocks purchased but it did not include also what the appellee intended in the transaction. To hold that when an order for the purchase of stock is given and the purchaser when he gives it intends the transaction to be a gambling one, that the stockbroker is also a party to a transaction of that character, when he had no knowledge of such intention on the part
In Young v. Glendenning, 194 Pa. 550, the court below in its conclusions of law, affirmed by this court, held that the intention to gamble must be shown to be the intention of both parties and not that of one alone, and in Irwin v. Williar, 110 U. S. 499,
The rejection by the court below of appellant’s offer to prove that appellee ran what is commonly known as a “ bucket shop,” and that his customers simply gamble upon stocks and never have any intention of purchasing outright and that appellant had numerous dealings with the appellee, was also assigned for error.
The “ bucket shop ” seems of comparatively late origin and doubtless it is a product of the speculative spirit which has prevailed pre-eminently during the last quarter of a century. Its name may possibly spring from the diminutive character of the operations there conducted. It may well be that nearly all of the transactions made there are of an understood wagering character and the definition that a “bucket shop ” is a place where wagers are made upon the fluctuations of the market price of stocks and grain or other commodities, as stated in Bryant v. Telegraph Company, 17 Fed. Repr. 828, may be correct, but a place should not necessarily stamp its character upon a particular transaction and especially should not in this case where the proof, coupled with a denial that the duebill was
The assignments of error are not sustained and the judgment is affirmed.
Also reported 4 Sup. Ct. Repr. 160. — Reporter.
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- Contract — Gambling contract — Purchase of stock. A transaction between a stockbroker and his Customer cannot be stamped as a gambling transaction, unless it appears that it was the intention of both parties that the stock was not to be purchased outright, and that there was to be a mere settlement of differences. If the broker shows that it was the intent to purchase the stock and that he was always ready to deliver it when called upon to do so, the mere intention of the purchaser not to pay outright for the stock cannot give the transaction a gambling character. Contract — Gambling contract — Purchase of stock — Bucket shop — Evidence. In an action on a duebill where the defendant alleges that the duebill was given as the result of a gambling, transaction in stocks, an offer is properly excluded to the effect that plaintiff ran what is commonly known as a “ bucket shop,” and that his customers simply gambled upon stocks, and never had any intention of purchasing outright. In such a case it is also proper to exclude an offer to show that the plaintiff had paid a tax to the United States government on a bucket shop.