Callahan v. Mercantile Trust Co.

• Decision Date: 21 June 1905
• Citation: 74 N.E. 666,188 Mass. 393
• Parties: CALLAHAN v. MERCANTILE TRUST CO. et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

188 Mass. 393

74 N.E. 666

CALLAHAN v. MERCANTILE TRUST CO. et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

June 21, 1905

COUNSEL

Wm. A. Munroe and Albt. M. Chandler, for plaintiff.

F. J Maloney, for defendants Kaufman and Bilowski.

Jas. J McCarthy, for defendant Logan.

Robt. F. Herrick and Guy Cunningham, for other defendants.

OPINION

HAMMOND J.

Upon the facts found by the master this is a hard case for the plaintiff. She intrusted to her legal adviser the savings of a lifetime, and he shamefully abused the trust. And yet we can see no principle of law upon which she can be relieved as against any of these defendants. There is nothing to justify a suspicion that any of them acted except with entire honesty, and in the exercise of absolute good faith. Moore, her attorney, was the only person guilty of fraud. She saw fit to trust him implicitly, and to execute and acknowledge such instruments as he asked for, and it was solely by reason of these acts of her own that Moore was enabled to sell and deliver with her own genuine signature and acknowledgment the note and mortgage and appropriate the proceeds to his own use. There was no forgery of her name, nor was she induced to sign or acknowledge any instrument by any false representation at the time on the part either of Moore or of any other person. She simply trusted him, signed what he put before her, and allowed him to have in his own possession all the documents which enabled him to deliver to the trust company the note and mortgage of January 9, 1902, with everything necessary to give the company an apparently perfect title to the same as a first mortgage. Before the delivery of any of the documents to any of the defendants she noticed the name of the trust company in the assignment, and inquired of Morris, an attorney at law, who was there to take her acknowledgment, what she had to do with the trust company, and when he replied to her that he did not know, but supposed she knew, what the papers meant when she signed them, she replied that Mr. Moore was her lawyer, and would not ask her to do anything wrong, and thereupon she acknowledged both the discharge of the old mortgage and the assignment of the new one to be her free acts and deeds. Moore at that time was an attorney at law in good standing, and this made it reasonably prudent for the plaintiff to intrust him with her money and business. The same fact, with the added circumstances that she had placed in his hands the mortgage note indorsed in blank by herself and all the documents necessary to transfer to the trust company an apparently perfect title to the note and mortgage as a first mortgage, including acknowledgments made by her, made it reasonably prudent for the trust company and the other defendants to deal with Moore on the footing that he had authority to assign the note and mortgage and to receive the purchase price. We see nothng in the circumstances to put either of the defendants upon further inquiry. If there was anything which, under the circumstances, could be characterized as negligence, it was upon the part of the plaintiff herself in executing papers without knowing their contents and purpose, and without asking for or receiving information as to...