84 Mo. App. 514 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1900
On the twenty-first of Pebruary, 1899, A. B. Snethen and P. B. Benson, co-partners in a box factory at St. Charles, Missouri, made a statutory assignment of partnership assets to Julius E. Rauch for the benefit of their creditors. Under this conveyance the assignee took possession of certain machines, one a setting-up machine number 1, and the other a nailing machine number 6, which machines his grantors held in their possession under an unrecorded written lease from the Morgan Machine Company, specifying the terms and conditions of the rental of the property, and providing further that at the expiration of a certain time the lessees should become the purchasers of said machines for $1,000, if it should appear at that date that they had previously made the payments and conformed to the agreements contained in said lease. The full title to the leased property was retained in the lessor until the purchase shoxdd take place according to the terms of the lease. The full payments required in the lease anterior to the vestiture of title thereunder, had not been made by the lessees at the date of their assignment, wherefore the lessor replevied the machines, and the defendant assignee answered setting up title in himself under the deed of assignment. The court sitting as a jury found the issues for defendant, and plaintiff appealed.
The first question presented by this appeal is, what changes in the rights of an assignee to prosecute or defend