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17 R.I. 679

24 A 466

Hawkins v. Capron

Supreme Court of Rhode Island

Decided April 11, 1892

Supreme Court of Rhode Island · decided 1892-04-11

Dependant’s petition for a new trial. This was an action of trover brought by the plaintiff, who was sole surviving partner of a copartnership known as James A. Ca-pron & Co., against the defendant for the conversion, after Capron’s death, of certain personalty of the firm. The defendant was executrix and sole legatee of Capron.

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Troops”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1892-04-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently December 1940

3 state decisions

10189219001910192019301940decided

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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Per Curiam.

¶1 Whether the relations between copartners with reference to their ownership of the partnership assets is more analogous to a tenancy in common or to a joint tenancy, we need not decide. In either case, a sole surviv *680 ing partner is entitled at law to the possession of the assets of the firm until its affairs are settled, as well against the representatives of the deceased, to whom he is ultimately liable to account, as against strangers. 17 Amer. & Eng. Encyc. of Law, 1161; Parsons on Partnership, 458; 2 Lawson, Rights, Remedies, and Practice, 1256. Trover is a proper remedy for a refusal of such possession. The court properly construed the articles of agreement in question, and instructed the jury to consider them as a whole in deciding the question of fraud.

Stephen A. Cooke, Jun., & Louis L. Angell, for plaintiff. Samuel W. AT. Allen, for defendant.

¶2 The cause of action in this case, the conversion of the goods, occurred after the death of the late partner. It was an injury to the right of possession of the plaintiff, not to the joint possession of the plaintiff and his late copartner. Hence the plaintiff properly sued in his own name. Smith v. Barrow, 2 Term Rep. 476, 478. The amendment allowed him to add to his name the words, “ surviving partner,” etc., which were an unnecessary but harmless description of the way he claimed to have acquired title to the goods.

¶3 We see no reason to disturb the verdict of the jury upon the evidence.

¶4 It does not appear that the alleged newly discovered evidence might not have been presented at the trial.

¶5 The motion for a new trial must be denied and dismissed.

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