Repp v. Wiles
| Decision Date | 09 December 1891 |
| Docket Number | 252 |
| Citation | 29 N.E. 441,3 Ind.App. 167 |
| Parties | REPP ET AL. v. WILES |
| Court | Indiana Appellate Court |
From the Shelby Circuit Court.
Judgment reversed accordingly.
J. B McFadden, for appellants.
B. F Love and H. C. Morrison, for appellee.
This action was commenced by John Repp and his co-appellants against Wiles & Berryman, as partners, to recover from them money alleged to have been collected by the defendants as attorneys. After the commencement of the action Berryman died, and the cause was prosecuted to final judgment against Wiles alone.
An answer was filed consisting of eleven paragraphs, pleading payment, settlement, accord and satisfaction, and other special defences.
A reply of several paragraphs closed the issues, and the cause was tried by the court, who, pursuant to a proper request, found the facts specially and stated the conclusions of law thereon.
The defendant had judgment upon the finding of facts and conclusions. Exceptions were duly taken to the conclusions of law.
The pleadings are remarkably long, covering over sixty pages of the transcript, and a great many questions arising thereon are discussed at considerable length by counsel for the respective parties.
There is but a small amount in controversy, and it would require an exceedingly voluminous opinion to state and decide each question discussed, and as the vital questions come before us upon the exceptions to the conclusions of law upon the special finding, we have determined to notice them alone.
The finding is substantially as follows:
In the year 1880 Wiles & Berryman were partners in the practice of law at Shelbyville, Indiana, and the appellants held a claim against the estate of Alonzo Blair, deceased, which was then in process of settlement in the Shelby Circuit Court. John and Benjamin Repp, acting for themselves and their co-appellants, placed said claim in the hands of Wiles & Berryman for collection, and they filed it in due form against said estate and obtained an allowance for the full amount, to wit, $ 550, in July 1880. The business connected with the handling of appellants' said claim was done by Berryman, and Wiles had no personal knowledge of it until in 1885, yet Berryman was acting on behalf of the firm. The administration was pending for several years, and in the early part of the year 1887 said estate was generally supposed to be insolvent, and the administrator so informed Berryman, and offered him the amount of said claim less the interest in full settlement and compromise of the same. At that time the appellants all lived in remote parts of different States and remote from Shelbyville, except Benjamin Repp, who lived at Columbus, Indiana, and Berryman informed him by mail of the probable condition of the estate, and of the administrator's offer of settlement. He answered "that so far as he was concerned, if that was the best he could do he was willing to accept it." Thereupon said Berryman, acting in good faith, and honestly believing said estate to be insolvent, accepted said proposition and received the sum of $ 550 in full settlement of the claim, which with accrued interest then amounted to $ 641.67. No demand was made upon Wiles & Berryman, or either of them, for said collection until the latter part of March, 1885, and thereafter the appellants employed James McFadden, an attorney of the Shelby bar, to collect said claim from Wiles & Berryman.
Berryman had received the money and was unable to repay it, and for the purpose of relieving him from liability one John C Deprez paid said McFadden, as appellants' attorney, the sum of $ 330, in full satisfaction of the interests of three of the appellants, viz.: John Repp, Benjamin Repp and Catharine Dyson, who were each the owner of one-fifth of said claim, and at the same time "said Deprez obligated himself in writing to pay to said McFadden for the other plaintiffs the further sum of $ 220 so soon as he produced authority from them to receipt for the same, on condition that it should be in full payment and satisfaction of the whole of said claim, and that said McFadden agreed in writing to receive said sum of money so paid, and agreed to be paid, by said Deprez in full settlement and compromise of said claim;" that thereafter, on the 13th day of January, 1887, said McFadden, as attorney for appellants, sued said Wiles & Berryman, in the Shelby Circuit...
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