Summeril v. Elder

Decided September 12, 1804

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1804-09-12

<p> If an agent indebted to his principal ships property to him on board a vessel belonging to a third person, (although boundto conform to the agent's orders) and the captain signs a bill of lading deliverable to the principal, the property there upon vests in the principal, and the agent cannot countermad or disturb the shipment. </p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1804-09-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently November 1880

6 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Shippen C. J.

¶1Even granting that the parties in this case have equal equity, still he that has the law must prevail. Now there can be nothing more clear than that upon the delivery of the bill of lading to the captain upon the 31st of January, the *109property vested in the defendant, it continued at his risk from that time to the 10th February, and had it been lost he and not Dawson and Watt would have been the sufferers. After having so vested, there was no authority in the agents to change the rights of the parties. The opinion of the court is that there must be

¶2Judgment for defendant.