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114 Mass. 71

Broughton v. Silloway

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided November 15, 1873

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1873-11-15

Contract for a refusal by the defendant to deliver to the plaintiff a deed of a parcel of land in Brighton, offered for sale by the defendant at an auction sale at which the plaintiff was the highest bidder.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently April 1940

5 state decisions

2018731880189019001910192019301940decided

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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Gray, C. J.

¶1The terms of the contract of sale requiring $500 to be paid down, the auctioneer had no right, by virtue of his employment as such, and without express authority, to bind the defendant by accepting as cash a check drawn against a bank in which the drawer had at the time no funds. Sykes v. Giles, 5 M. & W. 645. Williams v. Evans, L. R. 1 Q. B. 352. Taylor v. Wilson, 11 Met. 44. Story on Agency, § 209.

¶2There was no evidence in the case that the drawer had funds in the bank when the check was drawn, or that the defendant knew that the auctioneer had taken a check until the second day afterwards, or ever assented to or ratified the taking of the check. The act of the auctioneer in taking the check being unauthorized, tt was not necessary for the defendant to repudiate it.

¶3*74It follows that the defendant was entitled to the first instruction requested, and that the instructions given did not meet the requirements of the case.

¶4Exceptions sustained.

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