199 So. 734 | Ala. | 1940
This cause is before us to review and revise the opinion and judgment of the Court of Appeals in the case of Geneva Gin
Storage Co. v. J. P. Rawls et al.,
The suit was instituted in the Circuit Court of Geneva County by the petitioner here, the said Geneva Gin and Storage Company, against the said Rawls and Donnell for the conversion of three bales of lint cotton, the property of the plaintiff. The complaint charges a conversion jointly by the two named defendants.
The cause was tried in the circuit court on an agreed statement of facts which is set out in the opinion of the Court of Appeals as follows: "If the plaintiff is entitled to recover the amount thereof is $152.10. The cotton in question belonged to plaintiff and was stolen by Henry Donnell on or about the date named in the complaint out of its warehouse in Geneva County. Donnell used his own truck for the delivery of the cotton to defendant J. P. Rawls in Coffee County; selling the cotton to Rawls, who paid to him the market price therefor without actual or constructive notice that the cotton was stolen."
Upon the agreed statement of facts the circuit court rendered judgment for both defendants. The Court of Appeals has affirmed this judgment. We are now called upon to review and revise this judgment of the Court of Appeals.
No doubt the judge of the circuit court, who tried this case without a jury, was of the opinion that, while the complaint claimed as for a joint tort by the two defendants, the evidence showed separate torts by defendants; that while Rawls was guilty of a tort in acquiring the possession of, and assuming dominion over, the cotton of plaintiff, he did so without knowledge, actual or constructive, that the cotton had been stolen from plaintiff, and therefore he was not a joint tort-feasor with the thief, the said Donnell, and could not be jointly sued with him.
The court of appeals, it is evident, took a similar view. No doubt both courts were impressed that the case of Larkins
Moore v. Eckwurzel,
It is evident that in the Eckwurzel case the court overlooked the statute then in force, now Section 5720 of the Code. Lovelace v. Miller,
It is well-settled law, of course, that one who steals the property of another is guilty of a tort against the owner, for which the latter may bring an action for conversion. And it is also well settled that the trespass, committed in the original taking, did not in contemplation of law divest the true owner of the possession; and "every moment's continuance of the trespass and felony is, in legal consideration, a new caption and asportation." Smith v. State,
It is also the law that whoever undertakes tortiously to deal with the property of another as his own, or tortiously detains it from the true owner, is, in contemplation of the law, guilty of a conversion. A "conversion, in the sense of the law of trover, consists either in the appropriation of the thing to the party's own use and beneficial enjoyment, or in its destruction, or in exercising of dominion over it, in exclusion or defiance of the plaintiff's right, or in withholding the possession from the plaintiff, under a claim of title inconsistent with his own." Conner Johnson v. Allen
Reynolds,
In fact every unlawful intermeddling with the goods of another is a conversion, and it is no defense to an action by the true owner that the person so receiving the goods, was ignorant of his title. Lee v. Mathews,
A person who has stolen the goods of another cannot pass any title thereto to another, whether such other knew, or did not know, that the goods were stolen. 4 R.C.L. 294.
Both the thief, Donnell, and the purchaser were guilty of a conversion of plaintiff's property and were liable in an action of trover to the owner, plaintiff. *323
It is axiomatic that a sale, whether legal or illegal, requires two parties, a seller and a purchaser, and a sale requires concurrent acts, one the sale and delivery of the property, and the other, the purchasing and receiving the same.
When the thief, Donnell, sold and delivered the property to the purchaser Rawls, and the latter received and undertook to assume dominion over the same, both became joint tort-feasors, and both liable jointly in an action of trover and conversion to the owner, and this, too, without regard to whether Rawls had prior knowledge of the fact that Donnell had stolen the property.
In the case of Lovelace v. Miller,
It is our judgment that on the agreed facts the plaintiff was entitled to judgment against both defendants, and that the Court of Appeals erred in not so holding. It follows, therefore, that the writ of certiorari prayed for must be granted, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals reversed, with direction to that court to enter judgment for the plaintiff against both defendants for the amount of $152.10, with interest thereon at six per cent (6%) from January, 1937.
We may here state, before concluding this opinion, that the case of Powell et al. v. Thompson,
Writ granted; reversed and remanded to the Court of Appeals, with directions.
All the Justices concur. *324