Fottler v. Moseley

185 Mass. 563 | Mass. | 1904

Kbowltob, O. J.

The parties and the court seem to have assumed that the evidence was such as to warrant a verdict for the plaintiff under the law stated at the previous decision in this case, reported in 179 Mass. 295, if the diminution in the selling price of the stock came from common causes. The defendant’s contention is that the embezzlement of an officer of a corporation, being an unlawful act of a third person, should be treated as a new and independent cause of the loss, not contemplated by the defendant, for which he is not liable.

To create a liability, it never is necessary that a wrongdoer should contemplate the particulars of the injury from his wrongful act, nor the precise way in which the damages will be inflicted. He need not even expect that damage will result at all, if he does that which is unlawful and which involves a risk of injury. An embezzler is criminally liable, notwithstanding that he expects to return the money appropriated after having .used it. If the defendant fraudulently induced the plaintiff to refrain from selling his stock when he was about to sell it, he did him a wrong, and a natural consequence of the wrong for which he was liable was the possibility of loss from diminution in the value of the stock, from any one of numerous causes. Most, if not all, of the causes which would be likely to affect the value of the stock, would be acts of third persons, or at least conditions for which neither the plaintiff nor the defendant would be primarily responsible. Acts of the officers, honest or dishonest, in the management of the corporation, would be among the most common causes of a change in value. The defendant, if he fraudulently induced the plaintiff to keep his stock, took' the risk of all such changes. The loss to the plaintiff from the fraud is as direct and proximate, if he was induced to hold his stock until an embezzlement was discovered, as if the value had been diminished by a fire which destroyed a large part of the property of the corporation, or by the unexpected bankruptcy of a debtor who owed the corporation a large sum. Neither the plaintiff nor the defendant would be presumed to have contemplated all the particulars of the risk of diminution in value for which the defendant made himself liable by his fraudulent representations. It would be unjust to the plaintiff in such a case, and impracticable, to enter upon an inquiry as to the cause of the fall in value, if the plaintiff suffered from the fall wholly by reason of the defendant’s fraud. The risk of a fall, from whatever cause, is presumed to have been contemplated by the defendant when he falsely and fraudulently induced the plaintiff to retain his stock.

We do not intimate that these circumstances, as well as others, may not properly be considered in determining whether the plaintiff was acting under the inducement of the fraudulent representations in continuing to hold the stock up to the time of the discovery of the embezzlement. The false representations may or may not have ceased to operate as an inducement as to the disposition of his stock before that time. Of course there can be no recovery, except for the direct results of the fraud. But if the case is so far established that the plaintiff, immediately upon the discovery of the embezzlement, was entitled to recover on the ground that he was then holding the stock in reliance upon the fraudulent statements, and if the great diminution in value came while he was so holding it, the fact that this diminution was brought about by the embezzlement of an officer leaves the plaintiff’s right no less than if it had come from an ordinary loss.

Exceptions sustained.