People v. Eddy, 62

• Decision Date: 07 October 1957
• Docket Number: No. 62,62
• Citation: 349 Mich. 637,85 N.W.2d 117
• Parties: , Blue Sky L. Rep. P 70,361 PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. George G. EDDY, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 117

85 N.W.2d 117

349 Mich. 637, Blue Sky L. Rep. P 70,361

PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. George G. EDDY, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 62.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Oct. 7, 1957.

Thomas M. Kavanagh, Atty. Gen., Edmund E. Shepherd, Sol. Gen., Lansing, Gerald K. O'Brien, Pros. Atty., Ralph Garber, Samuel Brezner, Angelo A. Pentolino, Ronald J. Prebenda, Asst. Pros. Attys., Detroit, for appellees.

Edward N. Barnard, Detroit, for defendant-appellant.

Before the Entire Bench.

DETHMERS, Chief Justice.

Defendant was convicted of selling securities which had not been accepted for filing for sale by the Michigan corporation and securities commission, in violation of section 7 of the blue sky law (C.L.1948, § 451.101 et seq. [Stat.Ann. § 19.741 et seq.]). Proofs established that he had made a large number of such sales in the course of repeated and successive transactions of a like character to several persons.

It is defendant's contention that the identitly of some of the persons to whom he made such sales and who appeared as witnesses for the people became known to the officers only through their examination of records unlawfully seized by them in his home and that, therefore, the court erred in not granting his motion to strike 'all of the testimony of all of the persons who bouhgt' such securities from defendant. The record does not disclose, and apparently defendant did not attempt to show, which of the witnesses were so discovered by the officers to be such purchasers, but only that some, unnamed, were; and it was affirmatively shown that at least some of them were previously known to be such by the officers. If any of the evidence which defendant moved to have stricken were to be considered sidered incompetent for the reasons advanced, the motion was yet properly denied because it covered some testimony which manifestly did not suffer from the claimed infirmity. People v. Dowd, 44 Mich. 488, 7 N.W. 71; People v. Stanley, 101 Mich. 93, 59 N.W. 498. Furthermore, defendant cites and we find no authority for his proposition that the otherwise competent testimony of witnesses is rendered incompetent by the fact that the knowledge that they were possessed of information qualifying them to testify in the case came to the officers through their perusal of records unlawfully seized by them. No unlawfully seized evidence was introduced. The facts as to how the authorities learned whom to subpoena as witnesses are immaterial to the question of the competence of the testimony they gave. Learning of their identity through unlawfully seized documents could not serve to seal their lips forever.

Defendant contends that his motion for directed verdict of not guilty should have been granted on the ground that the securities he sold were his own property and that such sales were not violative of section 7 of the blue sky law as charged, even though the securities had not been accepted for filing for sale by the commission. Defendant's ingenious argument in this connection runs about as follows:--that the people claimed and showed continued and successive transactions by defendant in selling the securities in question; that section 21 of the act provides that nothing in subdivision II of the act shall be construed as prohibiting an owner of securities from selling them, excepting that when he sells them in continued and successive transactions he shall be deemed a 'dealer' therein; that, therefore, under the people's proofs he was, at most, a dealer; that under the definitions of section 2 of the act the terms 'salesman' and 'dealer'...