Brown v. Corey

• Decision Date: 05 March 1906
• Citation: 191 Mass. 189,77 N.E. 838
• Parties: BROWN v. COREY et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

191 Mass. 189

77 N.E. 838

BROWN v. COREY et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

March 5, 1906

COUNSEL

Wm D. Turner and Geo. Hogg, for appellant.

Whipple Sears & Ogden and A. Lincoln, for appellees.

OPINION

MORTON J.

In order to enable the plaintiff to maintain his bill it must appear from the allegations contained in it 'that there was a fiduciary relation between the parties * * * or that the account is so complicated that it cannot be conveniently taken in an action at law.' Badger v McNamara, 123 Mass. 117. The relation between the defendants and the plaintiff disclosed by the bill is, is seems to us, the ordinary relation between a broker and his client or customer, which, though it involves a certain amount of trust and confidence in the broker on the part of the customer, is not a fiduciary relation, but a relation as debtor and creditor. Chase v. Boston, 180 Mass. 458 62 N.E. 1059. The allegation that 'the plaintiff relied upon the knowledge and experience of the defendants in regard to buying and selling stocks * * * and employed the defendants as his brokers in order to avail himself of said peculiar knowledge and experience' adds nothing jurisdictional.

The averments that 'the number of purchases and sales which the plaintiff requested the defendants to make on his account was very great' and that 'owing to the number of said transactions it is impossible for the plaintiff to state with certainty how much the defendants now owe' but that a large amount is due him upon a proper accounting do not, in form or substance, allege that the accounts are so complicated that they cannot be conveniently adjusted in an action at law. In Badger v. McNamara, supra, and Ward v. Peck, 114 Mass. 121, where the facts alleged resembled those in the bill before us, it was held that the plaintiff was not entitled to relief. In Badger v. McNamara supra, the cases of Bartlett v. Parks, 1 Cush. 82, and Hallett v. Cumston, 110 Mass. 32, were distinguished on the ground that, in those cases, the accounts were to be settled on the same principles that they would be if the parties were partners. The bill cannot be maintained for discovery alone if that is not incidental to any relief which the court has the right to grant. Moreover, as said by the court in Wilson v. Webber, 2 Gray, 558, 561: 'The main purpose of these provisions of the practice act [referring to the provisions...