120 Ga. 388 | Ga. | 1904
The Security Investment Company, alleged to be a copartnership composed of Elliot M. Beardsley and Augustus A. McKelvey, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, sued B. F. Barksdale on several promissory notes, and, in addition to a general judgment, prayed for a special lien on certain land described in a deed given as security for the payment of the notes. Defendant pleaded usury. Pending the suit the defendant died, and R. 0. Barksdale, administrator, was made party defendant. On the trial, at the conclusion of the evidence, the court directed a verdict for the plaintiff. The case is here upon exceptions by the defendant to the. overruling of his motion for a new trial. From the undisputed evidence in the record we gather the following facts: In the early part of 1888 B. F. Barksdale employed B. S. Irvin to obtain a loan of $3,800 for him upon the land in question. Irvin was a loan broker, doing business in Washington, Wilkes county, who did not lend his own money, but simply undertook to find parties willing to lend money to prospective borrowers, and charged commissions for his services. He was the correspondent of the Georgia loan and Trust Company (hereafter called the Trust Company), a corporation of this State, which was itself engaged in the similar business of a mere loan broker or negotiator, charging borrowers a commission for its services. Irvin took Barksdale’s application for the loan and forwarded it to the Trust Company. The loan was made for $3,800. The notes for the same were dated February 1, 1888, due February 1, 1893, bearing interest at eight per cent, per annum, payable semi-annually, according to interest coupons thereto attached, and were secured by a mortgage on the land in question. The notes and mortgage were executed in favor of the Trust Company, though it was not the real lender of the money, the papers being executed in this form for convenience, and immediately thereafter were transferred to John Stringer, the true lender. Irvin charged Barksdale a commission of ten per cent, for procuring the loan, of which Irvin got three per cent, and the Trust Company seven per cent., which was deducted from the amount loaned by Stringer. Before the maturity of this loan, the Trust Company had arranged with the Security Investment Company (hereafter called the Investment Company) to negotiate a new loan to take the place of the old one. On January 28, 1893, Barksdale again applied to Irvin for a loan of $3,800, for the pur
The Trust Company procured the Investment Company to make loans submitted by it, but it had other correspondents and connections, and often procured lenders through other channels. The Trust Company had been thus dealing with the Investment Company for about a year when the loan in the present case was made. The Trust Company was not engaged in lending money itself, although it appeared that as a business policy it sometimes purchased a loan upon its maturity ánd non-payment, which had been negotiated through its .instrumentality, in order that the lender might be induced to accept other loans which it might have for negotiation. When the original loan was negotiated, February 1, 1888, the Security Investment Company was composed of Burr and Knapp, who were, respectively, the president and vice-president of the Georgia Loan and Trust Company. At that time and until January, 1892, Burr and Knapp, who were brokers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, did some business as negotiators of loans, and the Trust Company paid them a part of the commissions received by it whenever they secured an investor for one of its loans. As the notes and mortgages or deeds were at that time, for convenience, made to the Trust Company, though the money loaned did not belong to it, but to the parties advancing the same as investors, the facts had to be explained whenever suits were brought to collect the loans. To avoid this, the Trust Company induced other parties at Bridgeport to form a new Security Investment Company, for the purpose of making some of these loans. The old Security and Investment Company, composed of Burr and Knapp, went out of business and the new Security and Investment Company, composed of entirely different parties, was formed, in January, 1892. As before stated
Judgment affirmed.