29 Pa. 154 | Pa. | 1857
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This is an action of trover and conversion, brought by the Pittsburgh and Connelsville Railroad Company to recover damages for the conversion of a bond given by the county of Allegheny in payment of its subscription to the stock of the company. On the 1st July, 1853, the commissioners of Allegheny county issued 750 bonds, in each of which the county acknowledged itself indebted to the Pittsburgh and Connelsville
It is an undoubted principle of equity that the owner of property may follow and reclaim it wherever he can find and identify it, until arrested in the pursuit by the countervailing equity of a bona fide purchaser, for a valuable consideration paid. A purchaser with notice that the sale is a breach of trust, or a fraud upon the rights of the real owner, is particeps criminis with the fraudulent vendor, and his purchase cannot protect him against the owner, because such a purchase is not bona fide. Notice is either actual or constructive. Constructive notice is in its nature no more than evidence of notice, the presumption of which is so violent that the court will not even allow of its being controverted: Billington v. Welsh, 5 Binn. 134; Story's Equity, § 399. Whatever is sufficient to put a party upon inquiry, is in equity held to be good notice to bind him. Where a purchaser cannot make out a title but by a deed which leads him to another fact, he shall be ■ presumed to have knowledge of that fact: 2 Fonbl. Eq. 63, ch. 3, § 1, note (5); so he is supposed to have knowledge of the instrument under which the party with whom he contracts as executor,
But there is another ground equally fatal to the plaintiff in error. There is no evidence to show that any valuable consideration passed from Garrard at the time of the delivery of the bond to him. It is not pretended that he paid anything for it; nor is it alleged that he received it in payment of the pre-existing debt. It was received merely as collateral security for it, without any agreement whatever to forbear, or to extend the time of payment. His right of action was not suspended for an instant. If he loses the bond he sustains no actual loss, because he is left in the con
Judgment affirmed.