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141 Mass. 231

Robertson v. Coleman

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided February 26, 1886

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1886-02-26

Contract to recover the amount of a bank check for $91.08, signed by the defendants, dated March 31, 1883, and payable to the order of Charles Barney. Trial in the Superior Court, before Knowlton, J., who reported the case for the determination of this court, in substance as follows: On March 27, 1883, a young man went to the Metropolitan hotel in Boston, of which the plaintiff was the proprietor, and registered his name. as Charles Barney.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““That although’ the defendants may have been mistaken in the sort of man the person they dealt with was, this person was the person intended by them as the payee of the check, designated by the name he was called in the transaction, and that his indorsement of it was the indorsement of the payee of the check by that name. The contract of the defendant was to pay the amount of the check to this person, or his order, and he had ordered it paid to the plaintiff. If this person obtained the check from the defendants by fraudulent representations, the plaintiff took it, in good faith, and for value.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including First National Bank of Ft. Worth, Tex. v. American Exchange National Bank

Relies on Edmunds v. Merchants' Despatch Transportation Co. · Samuel v. Cheney

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1886-02-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently July 1987 · most notably Cohen v. Lincoln Savings Bank (1937), Land Title & Trust Co. v. Northwestern National Bank (1900)

6 federal appellate · 4 district · 42 state decisions — followed in 17 states

14018861890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Field, J.

¶1The name of a person is the verbal designa,tion by which he is known, but the visible presence of a person affords surer means of identifying him than his name. The defendants, for a valuable consideration, gave the check to a person who said his name was Charles Barney, and whose name they believed to be Charles Barney, and they made it payable to the order of Charles Barney, intending thereby the person to whom they gave the check. The plaintiff received this check for a valuable consideration, in good faith, from the same person, whom he believed to be Charles Barney, and who indorsed the check by that name. It appears that the defendants thought the person to whom they gave the check was Charles Barney, of Swanzey, a person in existence, but it does not appear that they thought so *233from any representations made by the person to whom they gave the check, although this, perhaps, is immaterial. It is clear from these facts, that, although the defendants may have been mistaken in the sort of man the person they dealt with was, this person was the person intended by them as the payee of the check, designated by the name he was called in the transaction, and that his indorsement of it was the indorsement of the payee of the check by that name. The contract of the defendants was to pay the amount of the check to this person or his order, and he has ordered it paid to the plaintiff. If this person obtained the check from the defendants by fraudulent representations, the plaintiff took it in good faith and for value. See Samuel v. Cheney, 135 Mass. 278; Edmunds v. Merchants’ Transportation Co. 135 Mass. 283.

¶2Judgment on the verdict.

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