Kramer v. Wilson
| Decision Date | 04 May 1886 |
| Citation | 22 Mo.App. 173 |
| Parties | ABRAM KRAMER ET AL., Respondents, v. JOSEPH A. WILSON, ADMINISTRATOR, Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
APPEAL from the St. Louis Circuit Court, AMOS M. THAYER, Judge.
Affirmed.
GRAVES & SHEWALTER, and W. C. MARSHALL, for the appellant.
NATHAN FRANK, and DYER, LEE & ELLIS, for the respondents.
This is a suit by attachment, which was begun in Lafayette county, against the defendant's intestate, William Knipmeyer, in his lifetime, and, after successive changes of venue, was finally heard and determined in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis. There was a jury trial and a verdict for the plaintiff on the plea in abatement, and afterwards a judgment by default against the defendant, on the merits.
The grounds for the attachment, as charged in the affidavit, were: 1. That the defendant had fraudulently conveyed or assigned his property or effects, so as to hinder or delay his creditors. 2. That the defendant had fraudulently concealed, or removed, or disposed of his property or effects, so as to hinder or delay his creditors. 3. That the defendant was about fraudulently to convey or assign his property or effects, so as to hinder or delay his creditors. 4. That the defendant was about fraudulently to conceal, remove, or dispose of his property or effects, so as to hinder or delay his creditors.
The plaintiffs undertook to show that, on and prior to July 1, 1881, the defendant, now deceased, was doing a small mercantile business in the town of Higginsville, Lafayette county, and about that time conceived the intention of purchasing a large quantity of goods on credit, with a view to disposing of them for cash, and concealing the proceeds without paying for the goods. That thereupon he made a number of first purchases from eleven different firms, located in several cities, amounting in all to $6,786.55. That, on December 16, 1881, when but few of these bills had matured, and Knipmeyer's total indebtedness amounted to $18,827.06, he sold out his entire stock to Grove Young for $6,200, and soon thereafter proposed to all his creditors to settle with them at twenty-five cents on the dollar, saying that he could do no more. That all these transactions were done on the part of Knipmeyer with the design to hinder, delay, and defraud his creditors, including the plaintiffs. On December 17, 1881, the attachment was sued out.
The plaintiffs introduced in evidence the deposition of Leverett Minor, an agent representing Dun & Co.'s Mercantile Agency, who testified that, on October 1, 1881, he called on Knipmeyer in the usual course of his business, to ascertain his financial standing and condition. Knipmeyer then told the witness that his assets would invoice seven thousand or eight thousand dollars, and that his total indebtedness was about two thousand dollars, none of it overdue. Error is assigned on the admission of this testimony, for irrelevancy and incompetency, as being too remote in point of time from the sale to Young, and as having no bearing on the bona fides of that transaction.
Where the object of testimony is to prove an act done the cases are rare in which it is permissible to go beyond the immediate vicinity, in point of time or otherwise, of the act itself, unless it be in the way of proving an admission by the party implicated. But where there is no dispute about the act done, and the sole purpose is to show with what intent it was done, a much larger latitude is necessarily allowed. Intention is a continuing condition, in many cases, that may exist for months, or for years. So long as it points in the same direction, there can be no impropriety in proving its presence, vithin reasonable bounds, at any time antecedent to the act. In fact, the longer the time, in a majority of cases, the more thoroughly matured would seem to be the purpose. No probing process can lay bare a man's secret intentions. They must be proved, if at all, by surrounding facts and circumstances, of which it may be true that no one of them, taken alone, would be available for any purpose, and yet, when all are considered and compared together, the most satisfactory proof is found of what the party intended to accomplish. The case of Singer v. Goldenburg (17 Mo. App. 549), is parallel with this in many particulars. That proceeding attacked the bona fides of a sale of goods made by Goldenburg to Franke in November, 1881. It was held proper to introduce in evidence facts tending to show that, when Goldenburg purchased the goods on credit in the August previous, he then had the intention of defrauding the plaintiff. This fact, coupled with the subsequent sale, and with the further fact that the goods were not paid for by Goldenburg, was considered to be competent and persuasive evidence of Goldenburg's intention at the time of his sale to Franke, three months later. The same principle prevailed in Lindauer v. Hay (61 Iowa 663); Shipman v. Seymour (40 Mich. 274); Angrave v. Stone (45 Barb. 35), and other cases. We think there was no errror in the admission of the testimony complained of. The declaration made to Minor, coupled with Knipmeyer's sudden insolvency but a short time afterwards, and his alleged inability to pay more than twenty-five cents on the dollar, had a strong tendency to...
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