2 Mass. App. Ct. 829 | Mass. App. Ct. | 1974
George Abdallah appeals from a final decree of the Probate Court disallowing his account as administrator of his mother’s estate, and allowing in its stead" an account as amended in accordance with the findings of an auditor, facts found to be final, and from certain interlocutory decrees in the same proceeding. (He has waived his appeal in the companion case, Richard G. Drury, administrator de bonis non, vs. George Abdallah & others.) The decedent died on May 10, 1965, and the account covers the period to September 30, 1966. G. L. c. 206, § 6. Bingham v. Commissioner of Corps, & Taxn. 249 Mass. 79, 82 (1924). (1) There was no error in charging Abdallah (the accountant) with $25,000 which the auditor found “as a fact . . . was in the safe . . . [and] which the administrator took and for which he has not accounted.” This finding was based primarily on the testimony which was given by the decedent’s three daughters who objected to the account and which the auditor believed. It was, in effect, a finding of subsidiary facts which “must stand unless there was no evidence in law sufficient to warrant them.” Union Old Lowell Natl. Bank v. Panie, 318 Mass. 313, 316 (1945). Other findings by the auditor, to which the accountant points, indicating that the decedent had assets apart from those in the safe are not necessarily inconsistent with this finding. See Lewis v. Conrad & Co. Inc. 311 Mass. 541, 546 (1942); Hanifin v. C & R Constr. Co. 313 Mass. 651, 658 (1943); Weiss v. Balaban, 315 Mass. 390, 392 (1944). (2) The auditor used a
So ordered.