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26 Conn. 480

Partelo v. Harris

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided October 15, 1857

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1857-10-15

Trover. The plaintiff, to prove his title to the property in question, offered in evidence a conveyance thereof to him by one Otis, in payment of a debt then due, with proof of delivery of the property. The defendants, creditors of Otis, and who had attached the property as his, claimed that the conveyance was made by him for the purpose of defrauding his creditors and in pursuance of a fraudulent combination for that purpose between him and the plaintiff.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1857-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently October 1991

9 state decisions

30185718601870188018901900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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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Ellsworth, J.

¶1The question made in this case we, consider as having been settled in that of Beach v. Catlin, 4 Day, 284. The evidence offered there and rejected by the court, consisted of a proposition of the grantor to a third person, to make a fraudulent deed to him, not brought home to the knowledge of the grantee. The court say: “ It was formerly the practice to admit what was said by a fraudulent grantor respecting his intent to defraud his creditors prior to the conveyance, as evidence in an action against the supposed fraudulent grantee, though he had no knowledge of it; but this practice can not be warranted on principle, for the grantee ought not to be affected by the declarations of the grantor, unless they come to his knowledge; and though a grantor may have a fraudulent intent, this may be wholly unknown to the grantee and the transaction may be bona fide on his part.” This decision has been followed to the present time. Barrett v. French, 1 Conn., 365. Pettibone v. Phelps, 13 id., 445. If, indeed, the grantee has knowledge of the fraud of the grantor, or of the indicia of his fraud, it will be safe and proper to hold him responsible accordingly, and let the jury pass upon the evidence ; but otherwise it should not be submitted to them, as it is not safe nor in harmony with the laws of evidence to allow counsel to press upon a jury the fraud of one man to make out fraud in another, without some proof of conspiracy or collusion being first introduced. Such evidence is unsafe because it is irrelevant, indirect and remote; and Starkie speaking of it says: “ To assert or write that a particular fact is true, is in itself, strictly speaking, a fact, but it is not one that is necessarily and immediately connected *483with the transaction, and at all events it is not a fact which will generally afford any reasonable and fair presumption of the truth of the recited fact, but such as in general would tend only to prejudice and mislead.”

¶2We are aware that there are cases in Massachusetts, and possibly elsewhere, to the point, that to make a conveyance fraudulent there must be a fraudulent intent on the part of the grantor, and that it is proper to prove this by the acts and declarations of the grantor himself, even if the grantee has no knowledge of them ; but this is not our law nor our practice. At all events, the great and necessary fact to be established is the fraud of the grantee, whose title is attacked for fraud of his own; without which no case of a fraudulent conveyance is proved, and with which a case is proved and established. A new trial is not advised.

¶3In this opinion the other judges concurred.

¶4New trial not advised.

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