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53 Ark. 135

Smith v. James

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided April 12, 1890

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1890-04-12

John S. Little, Judge. Smith & Co. sued James in replevin for three wagons. Defendant denied title in plaintiffs. The cause was submitted to the court sitting as a jury.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1890-04-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently October 1929

6 state decisions

301890190019101920decided

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.

¶1An agent, with power to sell and receive money in payment for his principal, has not the apparent authority to accept a cancellation of his own debt due to a vendee who knows, or by the exercise of reasonable diligence could know, that his debtor is acting as agent; because he knows that the benefit of the sale will inure to the agent only — a result inconsistent with the agency. Arnett v. Glenn, 52 Ark., 253; Story on Agency, sec. 77; Belton Company v. Belton Manufacturing Co., 64 Tex., 337; Williams v. Johnston, 92 N. C., 532.

¶2The court found only that James did not know the terms of the agency, and declared upon that, that his title was superior to the principal’s. That was error. It was only necessary that James should know that the person with whom he dealt was an agent, in order to be apprised that the transaction was beyond the scope of his authority.

¶3Reverse and remand.

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