Trover, for six cases of socks. Plea, the general issue. Facts found by the court. The defendant is an agent of Whittemore, Cabot & Co., of Boston, who are the defendants in interest, and are to be regarded as the defendants of record. The value of the socks is $592.80. Each party claims them by virtue of a title derived from one Quinn, who manufactured them, and whose custom was to send his goods to the defendants to be sold by them on commission.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1879-12-05
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently September 1906
3 state decisions
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.
¶1
On this record, the question does not arise whether the defendants have a remedy of specific performance in equity. 1 Story Eq.,
ss.
714 — 721, 746, 788-790. There was no actual or constructive delivery of the goods to the defendants. A mere contract to pledge even specific goods, and even although the money is actually advanced upon the faith of the contract, is not sufficient to carry the legal property in the goods.
Meyerstein
v.
Barber,
L. R., 2 C. P., 38, 51.
¶2
The plaintiff’s knowledge of the executory agreement, which did not transfer the legal title nor create a legal lien, would not make the defendants’ right of action against Quinn upon that agreement superior to the plaintiff’s mortgage in this suit at law. The plaintiff’s knowledge that the defendants were not pledgees would not make them pledgees. Nor does the fact that the $400 paid the plaintiff by Quinn had been obtained by Quinn from the defendants upon his promise to give them a lien upon the goods, affect the legal title of the goods, which is the subject of controversy in this suit.
¶3
The bankruptcy proceedings against Quinn are not a defence. His assignee is not bound to recover all property to which he is legally entitled.
Glenny
v.
Langdon,
98 U. S. 20, 31. And upon
*450
the assignee’s abandonment of this property, the bankrupt law does not give it to him who is strong enough to capture and hold it.
Lane
v.
Moore, ante,
80.
