Dillard v. Brenner
| Decision Date | 23 December 1895 |
| Citation | 18 So. 933,73 Miss. 130 |
| Parties | DILLARD & COFFIN v. HARRIS BRENNER |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
FROM the circuit court of the second district of Coahoma county HON. R. W. WILLIAMSON, Judge.
The opinion states the case.
Reversed and remanded.
John W Cutrer, for appellant.
The code of 1892 establishes as a ground of attachment the dealing in, buying or selling, directly or indirectly, future contracts or futures. Section 129 (9). Further than that, the statutes make the act criminal, and punish it by fine and imprisonment. Code 1892, §§ 1120, 1121.
The interdiction of the law is still further extended, and no action in the courts of this state can be maintained for the enforcement of any contract of the character alluded to. Code 1892, § 2117.
The appellant admitted having bought or having dealt in "cotton futures." In answer to a question on direct examination: "Did you buy or sell any future contracts within six months before the suing out of this attachment?" he says: "I went to Mr Wildberger's house in the evening, and told him I wanted two hundred bales of (futures) cotton, and I handed him the check for it--$ 200--the next morning." Then, subsequently, he went in $ 300 more. He turned over to Wildberger, in December, 1892 (the attachment was in January, 1893), a $ 300 fire insurance policy which had matured, and, in his own language, "sold it to Wildberger in payment of losses on cotton futures in December, 1892." "Wildberger received it in settlement of the $ 300 loss on cotton." This testimony shows conclusively that the appellee was within the ban of the statute. He was not only dealing in and buying futures, but doing so on his own account. His own means went into the transaction, and he is doubly convicted. There is no authority directly in point, but we cite one that is strong in its analogy. We refer to Marks v. State, 71 Miss. 206. The appellant, Marks, was a member of the board of supervisors of Quitman county, and had been convicted of buying county warrants, in violation of § 1239 of the code of 1892. The proof showed that he had bought solely for, and as the agent of, one McGinnis. It was held that, inasmuch as the record showed that his means had gone to effect the purchase, he was guilty as charged.
The statutes condemnatory of the dealing in or buying of futures are not less stringent than that under which Marks was condemned, and therefore it was immaterial and incompetent to prove who appellee was buying for, in justification of his conduct, and to excuse him from the operation of the attachment statute on the subject.
W. V. Sullivan, on the same side,
Filed a brief in which other assignments of error than that involved in the opinion are discussed.
Argued orally by J. W. Cutrer, for the appellant.
Accepting as true the testimony delivered by the defendant himself, the court should have given the peremptory charge for the...
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