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49 Ill. 449

Ellington v. King

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided January 15, 1869

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1869-01-15

Writ of Error to the Circuit Court of Clark county; the Hon. H. B. Decitts, Judge, presiding. This was an action of replevin, originally brought before a justice of the peace, by the defendant in error, Samuel J. King, against the plaintiff in error, Daniel Ellington, for the recovery of a horse. The plaintiff obtained a verdict and judgment before the justice, and the same result followed upon an appeal to the circuit court of Clark county.

Relies on Buchenau v. Horney

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1869-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently September 1982

4 state decisions

201869187018801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Mr. Justice Lawrence

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court:

¶2King exchanged his horse for a mare belonging to the plaintiff in error, Daniel Ellington, defendant in the court below. The trade was made with Addison Ellington, acting as agent for his father, Daniel. The mare proving unsound, King, about two weeks after the trade, took her back to Addison, who was living with an uncle, a mile and a-half from his father, and requested him to take her and return the horse. Addison replied, his father had the horse, and plaintiff must go to him. This plaintiff did not do, and did not at any time offer to the defendant to return the mare or demand his horse. King brought replevin and obtained a verdict and judgment.

¶3On the trial, the court gave the following instruction for the plaintiff:

“If the evidence shows the defendant, Ellington, recognized the agency of his son in making the trade, then a demand from the son, whose agency was recognized and continued by defendant, with power to deliver said horse, w-as all the demand necessary in order to authorize a recovery in replevin.”

¶4This instruction is seriously faulty, in assuming, as it does, that the agency of the son continued after the trade, so as to authorize him to rescind the contract. .The mere fact that the father had authorized the son to sell the mare did not also authorize him to rescind the contract at a subsequent period, and after the father had received possession of the horse taken in exchange.

¶5The court also erred in so qualifying the instructions asked by the defendant as to dispense with proof of a demand in case defendant had obtained the horse by fraud. If such was the fact, the plaintiff had the right to rescind the contract, but he could only do so by offering to return what he had received, and demanding what he had given. He could not retain the mare and at the same time recover the horse. Buchanan v. Horney, 12 Ill. 338.

¶6The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.

¶7Judgment reversed.

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