Russell v. American Bell Tel. Co.
| Decision Date | 27 February 1902 |
| Citation | 62 N.E. 751,180 Mass. 467 |
| Parties | RUSSELL v. AMERICAN BELL TEL. CO. et al. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Boyd B. Jones, for appellant.
I. R Clark and Hale & Dickerman, for appellee.
The plaintiff's intestate intrusted a certificate of stock indorsed in blank, to a fraudulent agent, and he, instead of using it for the purpose for which it was intrusted to him obtained an advance from the defendant by giving the certificate in pledge. The case, therefore, so far, falls within the general reasoning of Scollans v. Rollins (Mass.) 60 N.E. 983, and the usage referred to in that case was found to be proved.
In order to avoid the intimations of Scollans v. Rollins, the plaintiff sets up that in this case only the possession of the certificate, not the property, passed to the agent and that, as the possession was obtained by fraud, it was obtained by larceny in judgment of law. In Scollans v. Rollins, it is admitted that the general principle there laid down would not apply to an instrument indorsed in blank and stolen before it had been transferred. We shall not examine the premises of this defence because we cannot accept the conclusion. The qualification of the rule, as not applying when the instrument is stolen, is not based upon the name of the agent's crime but upon the fact that in the ordinary and typical case of theft the owner has not intrusted the agent with the document and therefore is not considered to have done enough to be estopped as against a purchaser in good faith. He certainly has not done enough if the estoppel is based upon the principle that when one of two innocent persons is to suffer the sufferer should be the one whose confidence put into the hands of the wrongdoer the means of doing the wrong. But in a case like the present the agent has been intrusted with the converted property, and it is totally immaterial whether by a stretch which extends larceny beyond the true field of trespass, his wrong has been brought within the criminal law or not. The ground of the estoppel is present and the estoppel arises.
The distinction is not new. On the one side are cases like Knox v. Eden Musee American Co., 148 N.Y. 441, 42 N.E. 988, 31 L. R. A. 779, 51 Am. St. Rep. 700, where an agent or servant simply had access to a document remaining in the possession of the owner; on the other, cases like Appeal of Pennsylvania R....
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...duly indorsed enables the holder to pass title good against the world has been recognized in numerous cases. Russell v. American Bell Telephone Co., 180 Mass. 467, 62 N. E. 751;Andrews v. Worcester, Nashua & Rochester Railroad, 159 Mass. 64, 66, 33 N. E. 1109;Scollans v. Rollins, 173 Mass. ......
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...1047. In the Hibbs case the opinion of the court quoted with approval from an opinion by Mr. Justice Holmes in Russell v. American Bell Tel. Co., 180 Mass. 467, 62 N.E. 751, where the doctrine of title by estoppel was clearly stated: "The qualification of the rule, as not applying when the ......
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