Hunter Construction Co. v. Lyons
Hunter Construction Co. v. Lyons
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
This is a feigned issue under the sheriff’s interpleader act to determine the title to certain personal property
For fifteen or twenty years prior to 1910 N. C. Hunter had been a contractor engaged in constructing railroads and highways in the county of Washington, this state. In August and September, 1908, he borrowed money from the Cosmopolitan National Bank of Pittsburg, and in July, 1910, Robert Lyons, the appellant, who had been appointed its receiver, instituted suit to collect the indebtedness due by Hunter from 1908, and, having obtained a judgment against him, issued an execution, by virtue of which the sheriff of Washington county seized a steam roller, stone crusher, dump wagons, etc., constituting an equipment then being used by Hunter in the construction of a highway near Eighty-four, in said county. About November 17, 1909, there was organized under the laws of the state of New York a corporation known as the Hunter Construction Company, and on the twenty-fourth of that month Hunter, according to his testimony as a witness for the plaintiff, executed and delivered to that corporation a bill of sale of all his road-making equipment, including the property in controversy, for which there was issued to him the entire capital stock of the corporation. At the same time he assigned to it a number of contracts, not including, however, the one for the construction of the road near Eighty-four, on which the machinery levied upon was being used. Some of the property included in the bill of sale was shipped to the Hunter Construction Company in New York, but none used in building the highway at Eighty-four was shipped to it there or elser where. It remained in Washington county, in the possession of Hunter, until it was levied upon. It had continued in his possession after the bill of sale was executed and delivered, just as before, and, at the time it was seized,
After the admission by the appellee that there had not been an actual delivery of possession to it of the personal property seized by the sheriff as the property of N. C. Hunter, his sale to the company was fraudulent in law, if not in fact, and, therefore, void as to the execution creditor to whom he was indebted at the time of the sale to the company, unless there was such a constructive delivery to the vendee as would take the sale out of the rule requiring actual delivery. The property admittedly belonged to N. C. Hunter prior to his sale of it to the construction company, and, having been found by the sheriff in his apparently continued and uninterrupted possession and use, the burden was upon the appellee of proving by sufficient evidence the constructive delivery to it upon which it stands to sustain its title: Barr v. Reitz, 53 Pa. 256.
In passing upon the question of the sufficiency of con
The judgment is reversed and is now entered here for the defendant in the issue, and it is further ordered that he recover his costs.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Hunter Construction Company v. Lyons
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- Syllabus
- Contract — Sale—Delivery of possession — Constructive delivery. 1. Where it appears that personal property which is the subject of a sheriff’s interpleader had belonged to the defendant in the execution and is found by the sheriff in his apparently continuing and uninterrupted possession and use, the burden is upon a person claiming through him of proving by sufficient evidence at least the constructive delivery of it. 2. In passing upon the question of the sufficiency of the constructive delivery of a chattel sold, the character of the property, the use to be made of it, the nature and object of the transaction, the position of the parties and the usages of the trade or business must be taken into consideration. 3. When constructive delivery of possession is relied upon as sufficient under the rule requiring change of possession from the vendor to the vendee, such delivery will not be held insufficient as a matter of law if the purchase was in good faith and for a valuable consideration, followed by acts intending to transfer the possession as well as the title, and the vendee assumes such control of the property as to reasonably indicate a change of ownership. 4. Where nothing has been done by the vendee to reasonably indicate to all concerned the fact of the change of ownership, it is the duty of the court to pronounce a mere symbolic delivery to be insufficient, but where there is evidence of such assumption of control as to reasonably indicate a change of ownership, it is for the jury to say whether it was ,bona fide or merely colorable, and whether it was enough to give notice to the world. 5. On the trial of a feigned issue under a sheriff’s interpleader to determine title to a steam roller, stone crusher and other implements, ¡the' plaintiff in the execution is entitled to binding instructions in his favor where the uncontradicted evidence is that the defendant in the execution, an individual contractor, who was also the president of the foreign corporation which was the claimant and the plaintiff in the interpleader, had executed a bill of sale of the articles in question to the claimant, that he did not deliver possession of them, that he did not remove his own name which was upon all of them, that after the bill of sale he had continued to use the equipment in fulfilling an individual contract of his own, paying a rent therefor to the claimant, and that he had given no notice of the sale, directly or indirectly, to anyone within this state.