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9 Wash. 2d 429

115 P.2d 933

Hanley v. Most

Washington Supreme Court

Decided July 17, 1941

Washington Supreme Court · decided 1941-07-17

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1941-07-17

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2003

14 state decisions

701941195019601970198019902000decided

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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Beals, J.

¶1 (dissenting) — In my opinion, the voting trust agreements referred to in the majority opinion were unilateral contracts, based upon no valuable consideration, and, like a power of attorney, subject to revocation at will. The filing of Mr. Hanley’s so-called “confession on appeal” prima facie constitutes a revocation on his part of these voting trust agreements. It does not seem to me that this court should, upon the record before us, finally determine the effect of the “confession” which Mr. Hanley has executed. The judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded to the superior court to hear and determine all issues presented or to be presented as the result of Mr. Hanley’s actions since the entry of judgment by the superior court. If the case has become moot, that fact should be determined by the trial court.

Main, J.

¶2 (dissenting) — As I see it, the execution of the voting trusts by Hanley was not such an exercise of his right to manage and control the community personalty as is contemplated by the statute. On the contrary, by the execution of the voting trusts, he divested himself of all right of management and control — not for the benefit of the community, but for the benefit of Most. It is quite apparent that the sole purpose of the voting trusts is to protect Most, not Hanley nor Mrs. Hanley. Hanley not only divested himself of power of management and control of the community estate, but also attempted to divest Mrs. Hanley of any right of control after his death; for, when he executed the trust agreements, his life expectancy was less than six years. *474 To my mind, the transaction is not defensible on the ground that it is a legitimate exercise of Hanley’s statutory right of management and control of community personalty.

¶3 I dissent.

¶4 Blake, J., concurs with Main, J.

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