Brown & Bros. v. Brown

• Decision Date: 31 December 1887
• Citation: 14 A. 718,56 Conn. 249
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: BROWN & BROTHERS v. BROWN et al.

14 A. 718

56 Conn. 249

BROWN & BROTHERS

v. BROWN et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

December Term, 1887.

Appeal from superior court, New Haven county.

Action by Brown & Brothers, a corporation, against William H. Brown and Hiram Van Dusen, executors of Philo Brown, deceased, on a note given by deceased. Judgment of nonsuit and plaintiff appeals.

J. W. Webster and L. W. Kellogg, for appellant. G. E. Terry and J. W. Alling, for appellees.

PARK, C. J. This case comes before us on an appeal from the judgment of the superior court in denying a motion to set aside a nonsuit. Prom the testimony produced by the plaintiffs on the trial, and which is spread upon the record, it appears that Philo Brown, of whose will the defendants are executors, on the 1st day of July, 1878, made his note for the sum of $125,000, payable on demand to Brown & Brothers, the plaintiff corporation, with interest, and left it with William H. Brown, now one of his executors, who was then the president of the corporation. No question is made as to the consideration of the note; and the history of the transactions out of which it grew, and the circumstances in which it was given, are of no importance to the decision of the case. William H. Brown was a principal legatee under the will of Philo Brown, who was his father, and had therefore a direct interest in preventing a presentation of the note against the estate. Philo Brown died in May, 1880, a little less than two years after the note was given, and up to that time William H. Brown had kept the fact that he had received the note from the knowledge of the other directors and members of the corporation; and after his father's death he kept the fact secret, in the same manner, until after the completion of the settlement of his estate in 1884, and, of course, until a long time after the period limited for presenting claims against the estate had expired, which was in December, 1880. The present suit was brought upon the note, against the estate, on the 10th day of June, 1884, which was less than four months after the existence of the note had been brought to the knowledge of the directors of the corporation other than William H. Brown.

The first question that presents itself in the case is whether the claim was legally presented against the estate of Philo Brown. It is clear that the mere fraud of William H. Brown in concealing the existence of the note, and in keeping it back from a formal and regular presentation against the estate, cannot help the plaintiff corporation. Every corporation must bear the fraud of its own agents. But we think it clear that, as William H. Brown was one of the executors of Philo Brown's will, his knowledge and possession of the note as president of the corporation were his knowledge and possession of it as executor. As he was acting in both capacities, he had the knowledge and possession in both capacities. It has been long settled by our decisions and practice that a formal presentation of a claim to an executor or administrator is not necessary. Hammett v. Starkweather, 47 Conn. 439. The language of our statute has been, through all our revisions, that the creditor "shall exhibit his claim." He must in some way bring it to the knowledge of the executor. It need not be done in writing. It is not enough that the executor has in some casual or outside way learned of the existence of the debt. He may, perhaps, have found some entry with regard to it among the papers of the deceased, or may have heard it spoken of it the street. It must be brought to his knowledge by some action of the claimants, or in his behalf, that the claim is held against the estate. Here William H. Brown, as president, had full knowledge of the existence of the claim, and of his duty to present it against the estate. But there was no reason why he should go through the form of giving himself notice of it. That notice, in his other capacity, he had already. There was no need of his making an oral declaration in one capacity to himself in the other. The speaker and listener would have been the same person. In Thomas v. Chamberlain, 39 Ohio St. 112, it is held that, where the same person was administrator of both the creditor and debtor estate, no formal presentation of a claim of the former estate against the latter was necessary, but that his possession of the evidence of the claim as administrator of the former estate was a possession of it as administrator of the latter, and that the law would infer a presentation of it. We have no hesitation in deciding that the claim was legally exhibited to the executor within the time limited for the presentation of claims.

The question whether the suit was brought within four months after notice of the rejection of the claim by the executors is one that does not arise in the case as it stands. It is wholly a matter of defense, and one that constituted no part of the plaintiff's case. We do not think it proper, at this state of the case, to give the question any consideration.

The questions made with regard to the rulings of the court in excluding evidence offered by the plaintiffs do not properly arise upon the question of setting aside the nonsuit. If evidence had been...