63 Neb. 554 | Neb. | 1902
This is a suit brought in the district court of Antelope county by appellant to foreclose a. mortgage for the sum of $100, dated October 31, 1887, and due November 1, 1892, executed by appellees A. J. Stonebraker and wife to the Globe Investment Company of Boston, Massachusetts. The petition is in the usual form; alleges the execution of the note and mortgage to the investment company; that the investment company, before maturity, sold the same to appellant; that no action at law had been commenced; that the note and mortgage had not been paid; and prayed foreclosure. Appellees answered, admitting the execution of the note and mortgage, and that the same had been sold to appellant; and alleged payment of all coupons, and of the principal of the note and mortgage to the Globe Investment Company, at Boston, where the note was payable, at maturity, in good faith, and without any knowledge that the investment company was not the owner of the note and mortgage. Trial was had to the district court, which resulted in a finding and judgment that the note and mortgage had been paid and satisfied, from which judgment appellant brings the case to this court for review upon appeal.
The facts disclosed by the evidence, briefly, stated, are as follows: On October 31, 1887, appellees executed the note and mortgage in suit to the Globe Investment Company, a corporation, located and doing business at Boston, Massachusetts. Soon after receiving this note and mortgage, the Globe Investment Company sold them to appellant. Appellant afterwards sold them to some other party, whose name, so far as the record is concerned, is not disclosed. After-
Q. You had negotiated the loans, and you undertook to give them such care as you thought they needed, and out of that care the practice of looking after them came. Is that correct?
A. The company’s whole business was based on the understanding and agreement that it should take care of the loans and make all collections. It could not have sold any loans if its clients had been obliged to collect from the western borrowers, or look after the distant securities. Neither could a company guarantee and advance payments if it did not control collections and the securities. The company published its agreement to collect and care for the - securities, and every investor expected it to do so.-
R. Heaton Smith, one of the managing directors of the appellant, testified upon this question as follows:
Q. What agreement did the plaintiff have'with the Globe Investment Company about the collection of the principal and interest of the loans represented by the notes and mortgages purchased by the plaintiff of the Globe Investment Company, or sold by the plaintiff for the Globe Investment Company?
A. There was no agreement, in the sense of a binding legal agreement on the subject. I understood that the Globe Investment Company would, and they did in fact, collect principal and interest without charge or expense to the purchaser, acting, in so doing, as the agents of the mortgagors, whose payments to them included the work of receiving and distributing principal and interest.
The latter part of the answer of the witness Smith quoted is a conclusion of the witness to the effect that the investment company, in making the collection of principal and interest, acted as agents of the mortgagors. The trial court, from all the evidence in the case, found that the investment company was acting as agent for the appellant
It is contended by counsel for appellant that, inasmuch as appellees dealt with the investment company, and made payments to it, believing that it was still the owner of the note and mortgage, appellees can not be protected in such payment. This proposition would undoubtedly be tenable if payment had been made to some person not authorized to receive it. But the rule has no application to the case at bar. In this ease the money came into the hands of the person duly authorized to receive it, and whether appellees dealt with the investment company as the owner or as agent of another is wholly immaterial. This rule is not violative of the rights of a bona-fide holder for value, and is fully sustained by the reasoning in the case of Exchange Nat. Bank v. Johnson, 30 Fed. Rep., 588, wherein it is said: “If the maker pay other than the rightful owner of the note, he can not rely on facts unknown to him, and not influencing his action, as an estoppel, but if the facts be of a character that establish an agency for collection, that is a defense against repayment.”
It follows from what has been said that the judgment of
By the Court: For the reasons stated in the foregoing opinion, the judgment of the trial court is
Affirmed.