10 Wis. 111 | Wis. | 1859
By the Court,
The respondent in this case was a general agent for the buying and selling of real estate, paying taxes, interest, and negotiating such matters as might be intrusted to him. As such, he rendered services and advanced money in procuring certain shares of stock and interest scrip, to be exchanged for bonds of the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad Company, for one Martin Stuifer. The bonds were returned by the Company to the respondent; and while in his possession, Stuifer sold them to Chappell, who demanded them, and delivery being refused, brought this suit. The respondent claimed a lien for the money he had advanced in procuring them and the value of his services, and the only question in the case is whether he was entitled to such lien.
The general rule of the common law is well understood, that wherever a bailee has, by his labor, enhanced the value of property intrusted to him, he has a lien for his services. The rule, also, is equally well settled, that agents generally have a particular lien upon the property of their principals in their hands for the amount of their advances and services in respect to it, and this particular lien is favored in l&w. Story on Agency, ch. 14. Now, it seems to us that the lien claimed here comes within either the one or the other of these rules.
But, if this was not so, then the facts would make the respondent a factor. The shares of stock were then property
We do not think that the testimony of Meyer, that when he demanded the bonds, the respondent said he knew nothing of them, or had not got them, brings the case within the rule that where a party on demand claims no lien, but sets up a claim entirely different, he cannot afterwards rely on a lien. Here the respondent set up no claim whatever, but denied knowing anything about them, if Meyer’s statement is true. But the respondent testified, and there is nothing to contradict it, that before the interview with Meyer, he had seen Chappell, told him he had the bonds, and was ready to deliver them on an order from Stuifer and the payment of his charges. It would not seem, after this, as though he could have seriously denied knowing anything about them. But the proper answer to this objection is, that there was no instruction asked upon the point. The charge of the court upon the general question of lien was correct. And although if the plaintiff insisted that the lien had been lost by the respondent’s denying knowledge of the bonds, a further instruction might have been properly given upon that subject; yet, none having been asked, and nothing done to call the attention of the court below to the point, the judgment could not be reversed, for the reason that it was not given. Lackner vs. Solomon & Conrad, decided at this term, 9 Wis., 129.
The judgment is affirmed with costs.