Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/840

 882 FEDEBAIi BEI>OBT£B. �copartners the receipt of the money, and afterwards checked it out himself and used it for bis own purposes. In the pass- book it was entered "cash per Fauntleroy." The defendants reposed great confidence in Fauntleroy, and allowed him al- most exclusively to attend to the banking business. This and other forgeries being discovered long afterward, and Faunt- leroy having been executed for some other f orgery, the plaintiff sued defendants, his surviving partners, to recover the money paid into the bank. They were shown to be wholly guiltless of the fraud, and to have had no use of the money, except that it had been paid into their bank in the usual course of their banking business by Fauntleroy. No entry of the money appeared in any of the books of the firm except the pass-book, and that they never saw, and never in fact knew of the deposit. �The defendants were held liable on the ground that the firm received the plaintiff's money and had it under their oontrol by being paid into their bank account; that the fraud of their partner, Fauntleroy, afforded no answer to the plaintiff's claim, af ter the money had once corne into their power, The court say : "It must be admitted that they were so far imposed upon by the acts of their partner as to be ignorant that the sum above' mentioned was the produce of the plaintiff's stock ; but it is equaliy clear that the defendants might have discovered the paj'ment of the money, and the source from which it was derived, if they had used the ordinary diligence of men of business. If they had not the actaal knowledge, they had aU the means of knowledge, and there is no principle of law upon which they can succeed in protecting themselves from responsibility, in a case wherein, if actual knowledge was necessary, they might have acquired it by using the ordinary diligence which their calling requires." �The case of Ex parte Apsey is not cited, but is consistent with the case of Marsh v. Keating, that if the defendants had known of the payment into the bank, and, using ordinary dil- igence, had not discovered the fraud, and had been in fact misled, by the payment being made in money, into believing that the money was Fauntleroy's, and had, in reliance ��� �