Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/497

 MARYB V. STR0U8E. ���■^^5 ���price, is unavailing. The inquiry does not reach the ques- tion whether there was or was not fraud in fact. It stops when it is ascertained that the agent was hoth buyer ahd seller. The law then declares the sale invalid, if the princi- pal elect to so consider it, not because àll sales so made are in fact fraudtilent, but because it will not permit any trustee or agent to purchase on aceount of another that which he sells on aceount of himself. It does not permit the agent to be lead into temptation by an act which raises a conflict between his integrity and his self-interest. �The supreme court of the United States anhounced this doctrine in very strong terms and with unanimity in Michmd V. Girod, 4 How. 503. The currentof authority in England; as well as here, is ail the same way. 4 Kent's Com. (7th Ed.) 475 ; Conkey v. Bond, 34 Barb. 276. �The manner in which the stock passed from Frankel to Prankel & Block, and from them to Strouse, does not, in my judgment, essentially alter the case. The fact that an ac- eount may have been stated between the defendant and Frankel & Block, in which this item of 500 shares of Frank- lin was included, does not bind the defendant, if he stated the accourt in ignorance of the faets. It appears that Frankel & Block never informed the defendant how the pur- chase had been made, and that the defendant did not, in fact, know of it until at or about the time of bringing this suit. The charge in the aceount which was rcndered to de- fendant, being for 500 shares of Franklin at three dollars per sharo, gave him no information in regard to the person from whom the stock was purchased. The charge was for a quantity and for a price within the liinit of his order, and he may, and naturally would, have supposed it had been fiUed in the regular way. �There was nothing to put him on inquiry, and he may now open the aceount for fraud, actual or constructive. So any payments the defendant may have made in ignorance of the facts cannot be binding upon him, however appropriated, so as to prevent him from avoiding the transaction when ho discovers the truth. ����