321 Mass. 105 | Mass. | 1947
The plaintiffs seek to establish a constructive trust in certain machinery alleged to have been purchased by the defendant Beal and to have been conveyed by him to the defendant Mason Machine Works Company. It is alleged that the company took the machinery with notice of the plaintiffs’ rights. The trial judge overruled a demurrer by the defendants and reported the question to this court. G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 214, § 30.
The principal issue is whether the allegations of the bill are sufficient to show that the defendant Beal, hereinafter called the defendant, came into such a fiduciary relation toward the plaintiffs and was guilty of such a breach of that relation that in law he became a constructive trustee of the machinery for the benefit of the plaintiffs.
The allegations of the bill on these points, stripped of all conclusions of law, are in substance these: The machinery, which, was located in a plant at Taunton, had been offered to the plaintiffs for $25,000. The plaintiffs had no knowledge of the value of such machinery, and were wholly without experience or ability in appraising it. On or about September 5, 1940, the plaintiffs, “for consideration,” employed the defendant, who was engaged in the used machinery business and was thoroughly familiar with the value of the machinery in question, to appraise it for the plaintiffs and to report whether $25,000 was a fair and advantageous price and whether the machinery should be purchased at that price, the defendant “assuring the plaintiffs that he would in good faith appraise the machinery . . . and that
Taking these allegations at their face value, as for present purposes we must, there might be on general principles ground for argument that the defendant had entered into a relation of trust and confidence with the plaintiffs and had violated his trust. Reed v. A. E. Little Co. 256 Mass. 442. But we do not pursue that argument, since we think that a long course of decision in this Commonwealth in closely related cases precludes us from reaching the result desired by the plaintiffs. It must be regarded as settled that if the plaintiffs had employed the defendant actually to buy the machinery in their behalf and he had bought it for himself instead with his own money no constructive trust would have arisen in favor of the plaintiffs. The cases are collected in the footnote.
Inasmuch as no constructive trust would have come about had the defendant been employed to buy the machinery for the plaintiffs, or to secure financing for such a purchase, we do not see how we could consistently hold that such a trust arose when the defendant was employed only to appraise the machinery. It must be remembered that the defendant had not been entrusted with any property of the plaintiffs or so far as appears with any confidential information; that he owned nothing jointly with them; that he was not as
The interlocutory decree overruling the demurrer must be reversed, and a decree must be entered sustaining the demurrer-
So ordered.
Kendall v. Mann, 11 Allen, 15, 17. Davis v. Wetherell, 11 Allen, 19, note. Barnard v. Jewett, 97 Mass. 87. Fickett v. Durham, 109 Mass. 419. Parsons v. Phelan, 134 Mass. 109. Bailey v. Hemenway, 147 Mass. 326. Emerson v. Galloupe, 158 Mass. 146. Bourke v. Callanan, 160 Mass. 195. Tourtillotte v. Tourtillotte, 205 Mass. 547. Kennerson v. Nash, 208 Mass. 393, 397. Southwick v. Spevak, 252 Mass. 354. McDonald v. Conway, 254 Mass. 429. Cann v. Barry, 293 Mass. 313, 316.