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66 Vt. 515

Barrett v. Kelley

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided May 15, 1894

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1894-05-15

Trover for the conversion of a safe. Heard upon an agreed statement of facts at the April term, 1893, Franklin county, Thompson, J., presiding. Judgment for the plaintiff. The defendant excepts. In the spring of 1892 O. R. Swett was engaged in the meat business at St. Albans, Vt. April 30 of that year he gave to a travelling agent of E. C. Morris & Co., of Boston, Mass., an order for a safe in the following words and figures : “Boston, Mass., April 30, 1892.

Relies on Cobb v. Buswell · Collender Co. v. Marshall

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1894-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 1933

5 state decisions

2018941900191019201930decided

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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ROSS, C. J.

¶1On the agreed facts, by the terms of the order given by the insolvent, at St. Albans, the agent who took the order was only a soliciting agent, with no authority to make an absolute contract which would bind E. C. Morris & Co. to a sale of the safe in controversy. He could simply take an order therefor, from the insolvent, and transmit it to E. C. Morris & Co., who resided in Boston, and who then had the safe in their possession at Boston, to be there accepted and approved of by E. C. Morris & Co. When E. C. Morris & Co., in Massachusetts, accepted the order the contract became a Massachusetts contract, as much so, as it would have beep, if the insolvent, in person, had, in Boston, given the order, and E. C. Morris & Co. had there accepted it, the safe then being there in the possession of E. C. Morris & Co. By the terms of the order and its acceptance, the safe was to remain the property of E. C. Morris & Co. until fully paid for. It is agreed that, under the laws of Massachusetts, E. C. Morris & Co. could hold *518the safe against insolvency proceedings and attaching creditors. The defendant, Kelley, stands in the rights of E. C. Morris & Co., and the plaintiff, in those of the creditors of the insolvent, O. R. Swett. Collender Co. v. Marshall, 57 Vt. 232. The question, therefore, is whether the contract for the sale of the safe which was made in Massachusetts, and the safe, which by the laws of that state was exempt from attachment and execution by the creditors of O. R. Swett, and from insolvency proceedings against him, became subject to the laws of this state, in regard to attachment, execution and insolvency proceedings, the same they would have been if the property had been in this state and the contract'for its conditional sale had been made here? On the authority of Cobb v. Buswell, 37 Vt. 337, where this question was fully considered by this court, it must be held, that the rights of E. C. Morris & Co. to the safe, remain .and, by comity of law, will be in force here, the same as fixed by the contract under the laws of Massachusetts, where the safe was, and the contract in regard to its conditional sale was made. Under this view of the contract, and law governing it, and the safe which was the subject of the contract, the

¶2Judgment of the county court is reversed, and judgment rendered for the defendant to recover his costs.

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