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7 Wend. 320

Rathbun v. Ingals

New York Supreme Court

Decided May 15, 1831

New York Supreme Court · decided 1831-05-15

This was an action of assumpsit, tried at the Washington circuit in June, 1828. The plaintiff proved that $45 were passed to the credit of the defendant, on one Fish becoming bound to a creditor of the defendant to that amount, and that Fish thus became bound to satisfy a demand of the plaintiff against him, which had been left with the defendant as an attorney for collection.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1831-05-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently May 1891

13 state decisions

601831184018501860187018801890decided

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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¶1By the Court,

Sutherland, J.

¶2The plaintiff was properly nonsuited, on the ground that there was no evidence of a demand of the money having been made upon him, or directions' *321to remit having been given before the commencement of the suit. It was decided in Taylor v. Bates, 5 Cowen, 376, that an attorney was not liable to an action for money collected by him as attorney for another, until demand or directions to remit. The evidence of a waiver of a demand was not sufficient, under the circumstances of the case, to go to the jury; or at all events, to justify them in finding for the plaintiff.

¶3The money appears to have been collected by the defendant in the year 1820, about which time the plaintiff abscond, ed from Easton where he resided, and has not been seen there publicly since. To whom was the defendant to pay the money T It could not be paid to the plaintiff, and he never appointed or constituted an agent for the purpose.

¶4The declarations of the defendant, made to third persons, not the agents of the plaintiff nor in any manner connected with him in relation to this business, that he intended to retain the money to indemnify him for a fraud which had been committed upon him by the plaintiff in the sale of a horse, are not to be considered such a refusal to pay as would dispense with the necessity of a demand. If the persons to whom the declarations were made had been the agents of the plaintiff, authorized to ascertain from the defendant whether he intended to pay the money or not, the case would have been different ; as the facts are, the defendant is not to be affected by those declarations; there is no evidence that they ever came ■ to the knowledge of the plaintiff.

¶5Motion for new trial denied.

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