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201 Mass. 1

Buzzell v. Tobin

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 7, 1909

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1909-01-07

<p> Bills and Notes. </p> <p>Where a check has been negotiated by the payee to one who received it as a holder in due course under R. L. c. 73, § 69, the maker, in an action against him by such holder to enforce payment of the check, cannot rely on the defense that the check was delivered to the payee without authority by the maker’s bookkeeper, a valid delivery by the maker being conclusively presumed under R. L. c. 73, § 33, when the instrument is in the hands of the holder in due course.</p>

Relies on Hill v. Hall · Massachusetts National Bank v. Snow · Shawmut National Bank v. Manson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1909-01-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1953

2 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

20190919101920193019401950decided

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 →

Braley, J.

¶1If the consideration of the check as between the defendant and the payee was the price of a pair of horses, which might have been found to have been unsound at the time of sale, yet the plaintiff as indorsee, having taken the check for value and in good faith before it was overdue, and without notice of any infirmity or that payment had been stopped at the bank, became a holder in due course with all the rights appertaining to such a title. B. L. c. 73, § 69. Wheeler v. Guild, 20 Pick. 545, 552, 553. Shawmut National Bank v. Manson, 168 Mass. 425. Massachusetts National Bank v. Snow, 187 Mass. 159. The defendant, while not expressly conceding this, rests his defense solely on the ground, that, because his clerk had no express authority to deliver the check to the payee, it was unlawfully put in circulation, and, the contract being incomplete, no title passed to the plaintiff by its subsequent negotiation. Fearing v. Clark, 16 Gray, 74. Hill v. Hall, 191 Mass. 253, 265. But the check was in the hands of the plaintiff as a holder in due course, and as to him a valid delivery by the defendant was conclusively presumed, even if this defense would have been open as between the original parties. K. L. c. 73, § 33. Massachusetts National Bank v. Snow, 187 Mass. 159, 163. We are, therefore, not called upon to decide, whether there was other *3evidence upon which under suitable instructions the jury could have found either actual or constructive delivery. It accordingly follows, that the ruling requested could not properly have been given, and that the case was rightly submitted to the jury.

¶2 Exceptions overruled.

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