Fottler v. Moseley

• Decision Date: 19 May 1904
• Citation: 185 Mass. 563,70 N.E. 1040
• Parties: FOTTLER v. MOSELEY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

185 Mass. 563

70 N.E. 1040

FOTTLER v. MOSELEY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

May 19, 1904

COUNSEL

Nason & Proctor, for plaintiff.

Benj. L. M. Tower and Ernest O. Hiler, for defendant.

OPINION

KNOWLTON C.J.

The parties and the court seem to have assumed that the evidence was such as to warrant a verdict for the plaintiff, under the law stated at the previous decision of this case, reported in 179 Mass. 295, 60 N.E. 788, if the diminution in the selling price of the stock came from common causes. The defendant's contention is that the embezzlement of an officer of a corporation, being an unlawful act of a third person, should be treated as a new and independent cause of the loss, not contemplated by the defendant, for which he is not liable. To create a liability, it is never necessary that a wrongdoer should contemplate the particulars of the injury from his wrongful act, nor the precise way in which the damages will be inflicted. He need not expect even that damage will result at all, if he does that which is unlawful and which involves a risk of injury. An embezzler is criminally liable, notwithstanding that he expects to return the money appropriated after having used it. If the defendant fraudulently induced the plaintiff to refrain from selling his stock when he was about to sell it, he did him a wrong and a natural consequence of the wrong, for which he was liable, was the possibility of loss from diminution in the value of the stock from any one of numerous causes. Most, if not all, of the causes which would be likely to affect the value of the stock, would be acts of third persons, or at least conditions for which neither the plaintiff nor the defendant would be primarily responsible. Acts of the officers, honest or dishonest, in the management of the corporation, would be among the most common causes of a change in value. The defendant, if he fraudulently induced the plaintiff to keep his stock, took the risk of all such changes. The loss to the plaintiff from the fraud is as direct and proximate, if he was induced to hold his stock until an embezzlement was discovered, as if the value had been diminished by a fire which destroyed a large part of the property of the corporation, or by the unexpected bankruptcy of a debtor who owed the corporation a large sum. Neither the plaintiff nor the defendant would be presumed to have contemplated all the particulars of the...