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6 Duer 71

Hall v. Naylor

The Superior Court of New York City · decided 1856-06-15

The action was to recover the possession or value of a lot of hosiery and embroideries, worth $6293^-, delivered by the plaintiff, an importer in New York, to Adam Kerr and Charles W. Adams, composing the firm of Kerr & Co., retail dry goods merchants, doing business at No. 767 Broadway, on the 25th and 31st days of March, 1854, which they fraudulently pretended to buy on a credit of eight months.

Decided 1856-06-15

By the Court. Oakley, Ch. J.

¶1The following propositions involve all the material points raised in the case, and decide the exceptions.

¶2We are of the opinion that it is not enough, in order to avoid a credit purchase of goods, that it turns out the purchaser was insolvent at the time, and had ground to suppose himself insolvent. The proposition that a purchaser upon credit stands in a confidential relation to his creditor, so as to bind him to disclose his sitúa*75tion, without any inquiry by the seller, is not sustained by any sufficient authority.

¶3If, at the time of a credit purchase, the party is hopelessly insolvent, and knows it, and such purchase is speedily followed by a transfer of all his property for the payment of his debts, evidence may be admitted of other transactions with, or other declarations to different parties, about the same period, tending to the-conclusion of a general design to defraud creditors by fraudulent purchases.

¶4The test inquiry in such cases is, did the party purchase the goods in question with an intention not to pay for them ? and the seller, after making such a case as is above stated, may introduce evidence of representations of solvency and credit to other persons about the same time.

¶5It makes no difference, in the application of this rule, that no positive representation of solvency was made in the case before the court.

¶6The last two clauses of the charge of the Judge submitted the case to the jury, with the point of law correctly stated. Even if previous parts of the charge admit of a construction not strictly accurate, we are of opinion that such parts are to be controlled by the subsequent clauses.

¶7Applying these principles to the facts of the case, we have no doubt that the judgment should be affirmed.

¶8Order accordingly.

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