Gordon v. Howard

• Decision Date: 31 July 1876
• Citation: 57 Ga. 410
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: Tison & Gordon, plaintiffs in error. v. P. J. Howard,defendant in error.

57 Ga. 410

Tison & Gordon, plaintiffs in error. v. P. J. Howard, defendant in error.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

(Atlanta, July Term, 1876.)

Factors. Negotiable instruments. Bills of lading. Indorsement. Before Judge Hall. Monroe Superior Court. March Term, 1876.

Howard filed his bill against Tison & Gordon and Lampkin & Company, to recover the value of certain cotton consigned to the former, and damages for the conversion of the same, making the case presented by the 3d head note above. The jury found for the plaintiff. Tison & Gordon moved for a new trial upon the following, among other grounds:

*1st. Because the court erred in charging the jury as follows: "That the fact that Lampkin & Company may have been indebted to Tison & Gordon at the time the cotton was shipped, and that Tison & Gordon may have appropriated the proceeds of the sale to the payment of such indebtedness, will not estop Howard from setting up claim, although, by his act, they may have been led to believe that the title was in Lampkin & Company."

2d. Because the court erred in charging the jury as follows: "If Lampkin & Company did not draw specially on the cotton in controversy, but drew generally, and defendants had cotton sufficient besides this to pay the drafts, then they could not charge up the drafts as advances on this cotton."

The motion was overruled and Tison & Gordon excepted.

Beck & Beeks, for plaintiffs in error.

Hammond & Berner; R. E. Lester; Cabaniss & Turner, for defendant.

BLECKLEY, Judge.

Bills of lading are often mentioned in the books as negotiable instruments; and so they are, in a general sense, for they are symbolic of the poperty which they describe, and when there is a design to pass the property, that purpose may be accomplished by transferring the bills. But where the common law prevails and no statutes have been passed to better their standing, bills of lading do not enjoy the full dignity of negotiable paper, proper; that is, the mere possession of them in a state apparently regular, and under circumstances apparently innocent, does not always enable the holder to negotiate them with full protection to a bona fide purchaser. If they are stolen, or procured from the owner by fraud, or entrusted to an agent for mere custody and safe keeping, they occupy much the same, or perhaps exactly the same, position that the property itself would occupy if it were thus dealt with instead of the bills which represent it. That they are on a different...