Furnas v. Friday
| Decision Date | 25 May 1885 |
| Docket Number | 11,586 |
| Citation | 1 N.E. 296,102 Ind. 129 |
| Parties | Furnas v. Friday |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Porter Circuit Court.
Judgment reversed.
A. L Jones, F. P. Jones and J. W. Rose, for appellant.
W Johnston, for appellee.
The third paragraph of the appellee's complaint, omitting the formal parts, reads thus: "The plaintiff was desirous of purchasing and stocking his farm with a number of good, healthy, sound sheep, in addition to the flock he then owned and had on said farm, and the defendant, hearing of plaintiff's desire to so purchase sheep, represented and stated to him that he, the defendant, had a flock of good, healthy, sound sheep, free from disease of all kind, and caused plaintiff to look at said sheep, which then appeared sound and free from disease, and the defendant repeated his representation that the sheep were sound and free from disease, and the plaintiff, acting and relying on the representations of the defendant, as the defendant well knew, bought the sheep for the price of three hundred and twenty-five dollars, and took them to his farm, and so relying on said representations, placed sheep so bought by him in the field with his flock of sound and healthy sheep; that the sheep so purchased of the defendant were not sound or healthy, but were infected with a fatal and contagious disease, known as the scab."
The modern doctrine is that fraud may exist without knowledge of the untruth of the representations made to induce a party to enter into a contract. The text-writers fully approve the doctrine, and it has found favor in this court. West v. Wright, 98 Ind. 335; Roller v. Blair, 96 Ind. 203; Bethell v. Bethell, 92 Ind. 318; Brooks v. Riding, 46 Ind. 15; Krewson v. Cloud, 45 Ind. 273; Booher v. Goldsborough, 44 Ind. 490; Frenzel v. Miller, 37 Ind. 1; S. C., 10 Am. R. 62. The third paragraph of the complaint is, therefore, not bad, for the reason that it does not aver that the defendant knew the representations made by him were untrue.
Although it is true that a complaint seeking a recovery for injuries arising from misrepresentations need not allege that the defendant knew that his representations were false, it is necessary that it should state facts showing that they were fraudulent. Representations made for an honest purpose, and with fair reason for believing them to be true, can not be deemed to constitute fraud, although it may turn out that they...
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