Odd Fellows' Hall Ass'n v. Mcallister

• Decision Date: 26 February 1891
• Citation: 153 Mass. 292,26 N.E. 862
• Parties: ODD-FELLOWS' HALL ASS'N v. McALLISTER et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

153 Mass. 292

26 N.E. 862

ODD-FELLOWS' HALL ASS'N v. McALLISTER et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

February 26, 1891

Exceptions from superior court, Suffolk county JOHN LATHROP, Judge.

HEADNOTES

Trusts 260

390 ----

390IV Management and Disposal of Trust Property

390k245 Actions Between, By, or Against Trustees

390k260 Process and Appearance.

In an action against trustees their designation in the writ as trustees is surplusage, since judgment must be rendered for or against them as individuals, even though they are entitled to indemnity from the trust fund.

COUNSEL

H.G Allen, for plaintiff.

Gaston & Whitney and J.F. Kilton, for defendants.

OPINION

HOLMES J.

This is an action of replevin for certain furniture, purchased with the proceeds of an Odd-Fellows fair, and placed in the plaintiff's building by the committee of the fair. The defendants are trustees of voluntary associations, (branches we presume, of a large, voluntary association,) called encampments of Odd-Fellows, who hired the rooms in which the furniture was, and removed it when their leases ended and they moved elsewhere. The main question before us is whether there was any evidence on which the plaintiff was entitled to go to the jury.

If the case stopped with the foregoing facts there could be no doubt that the plaintiff would be entitled to recover. Whatever may have been the old law, (Y.B. 20 Hen. VI., 18, pl. 8,) at the present day one who has possession of goods is entitled to keep them as against any one not having a better title, and therefore may maintain replevin for them, as he may trover. Pub.St. c. 184,§ 10; Rich v. Ryder, 105 Mass. 306, 310; Shaw v. Kaler, 106 Mass. 448, 449. The plaintiff got possession of the furniture when it was placed in the plaintiff's building, the more plainly that we must take it to have been placed there with the plaintiff's knowledge. Much less than that has been held to constitute possession. Barker v. Bates, 13 Pick. 255, 257, 261; McAvoy v. Medina, 11 Allen, 548; Elwes v. Gas Co., 33 Ch.Div. 562, 568; Reg. v. Rowe, Bell, Cr.Cas. 93; Y.B. 12 Hen. VIII., 9, 11, p. 2.

The question actually presented is whether the existence or effect of the plaintiff's prior possession is taken away as matter of law, by other facts not in controversy. We do not propose to discuss the evidence at length; it will be enough to state the grounds of our answer in a general way. The plaintiff, for the purpose of this case, does not claim the absolute ownership of the property. It seems clear that, whether there is a valid and binding trust or not, if the plaintiff should ignore the Odd-Fellows altogether, and should use the furniture for purposes of private gain, wholly disconnected with that association, it would be departing from the understanding on which it received the goods. We are far from saying that there was not some ground for inferring that the gift, if it was a gift, was intended to benefit the particular bodies who were known to be intending to occupy the rooms where the furniture was placed, and who are represented by the defendants. They were the only bodies of Odd-Fellows in Boston at the time. Or, if it be put another way, we do not say that the jury might not have inferred that the title remained in the same persons, whoever they might be, who owned the proceeds of the fair. No doubt the mode in which the money was raised, the circumstances of the fair, and even the provision in the lease that all furniture on the premises should be at the sole risk of the lessees, lent some countenance to one or the other of these views. Probably, in fact, as usually happens in such cases, no one thought accurately about the question where the title would be after the furniture was placed in the building. But the one legal person to be seen in the midst of the voluntary groups surrounding it was the plaintiff. The committees and organization of the fair vanished as such with the occasion. The fair was not managed by the...