Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/408

 NOTES OF RECENT CASES Hams, 64 Cal. 498, 2 Pac. 393; Levels v. Railroad, 196 Mo. 622, 94 S. W. 278, and numerous other cases. GAMING. (Trusts — Notice.) U. S. C. C. A. oth. Cir. — The right of a cestui que trust to recover from a bucket shop owner trust funds lost by the trustee is upheld in Joslyn v. Downing, Hopkins & Co., 150 Fed., 317. In this case, it appeared that the bucket shop owner knew that his customer was financially embarrassed and was therefore put on inquiry as to whose money the customer was using. The cestui que trust did not participate in the gambling transactions and had no knowledge that its money was so used. Under these circumstances, the court held that the cestui que trust was entitled to recover, and this the court held to be true even though the bucket shop owner had not been put upon inquiry as to whether or not its customer, the trustee, was using his own money. INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT. (Passes — Existing Contracts.) U. S. C. C. W. D. Ky. — The effect of the provision of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1906 prohibiting free transportation is considered in the recent case of Mottley v. Louis ville & N. R. Co., 150 Fed. Rep. 406, with reference to a prior contract for free transportation for life, made by a carrier in consideration of a release of damages for injuries. The contract in question, the court considered to be based on a valuable consideration. Applying general rules of construction to the provision in the statute, the court held that the provision did not invalidate the contract nor did it authorize the carrier to re fuse longer to issue passes good beyond the boundaries of the state. LANDLORD AND TENANT. (Removal of Furniture.) Sup. Ct. N. Y. — Harder v. Htinemann, 100 N. Y. Sup. 250, was an action by a tenant against the landlord for the conversion of an ice box. The defendant leased a store to the plaintiff, who carried on in it the business of retail dealer in butter and eggs. The ice box he put in for his business being too large to go through the door, he took out the large plate glass which formed part of the front of the store, and was set in the building itself, instead of in a movable sash, and put the ice box in through the opening, and replaced the plate glass. The landlord was present while the ice box was being put in in that way, and did not forbid or prevent it, but only asked who was to repair the damage by the re moval of the glass, the plaintiff saying he would. When the tenant was moving out at the end of the term the defendant prevented him from taking the ice box out in the way he took it in and there was no other way to take it out. It could not be taken apart without being destroyed, or greatly

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injured. The court held that the refusal of defendant to allow plaintiff to remove the plate glass to take out the ice box was conversion, as by assenting to the removal of the plate glas» to take the ice box in, defendant assented to the taking of it out in the same way. Kelsey v. Durkee, 33 Barb. 410. LARCENCY. (Securing Baggage of Another by Transferring Checks.) Ill. — A novel scheme for obtaining possession of the personal goods of another with the intent to convert them to the taker's own use without the consent of the owner, is disclosed in the case of Aldrich v. People, 79 N. E. Rep. 964. A passenger, boarding a steamer in Michigan and bound ultimately for California, checked her trunk to Chicago, and upon arrival there rechecked the trunk to California by simply surrendering the first check and taking another in exchange for it, without actually seeing her trunk in the office of the transportation company. The trunk delivered to her in California was not her own, and on being opened was found to con tain nothing but waste paper. The passenger's trunk was afterwards identified while being shipped from Chicago to Milwaukee, and the con tents of the trunk were found in the room of the person who held the checks for the trunk on its passage from Chicago to Milwaukee. It seems that during the passage from Michigan to Chicago, the defendant transferred the baggage checks on tne trunks, and in this way secured the delivery to him of the trunk of the passenger who was bound for California. The court holds that such an act is larceny if there was a felonious intent throughout the entire scheme to steal the baggage. While the transportation company was unknow ingly made the agency for securing actual pos session of the trunk, the court does not regard this as an act relieving the accused from liability for the offense. An asportation may be effected by means of innocent human agency as well as by mechanical agency or by the offender's own hands. Where, with intent to steal, a wrongdoer employs orsets in motion any agency, eitheranimate orinanimate, with the design of effecting the transfer of the possession ot the goods of another to him, in order that he may feloniously convert and steal them, the larceny will be complete, if in pursuance of such agency the goods come into the hands of the wrongdoer and he feloniously converts them to his own use. In support of this rule, the court cites Commonwealth v. Barry, 125 Mass. 390; Woods v. People, 222 Ill. 293, 78 N. E. 607; and Clark & Marshall on Law of Crimes, p. 446. MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. (Torts — Vaccination Order.) Mass.— The liability of a town for the action of a school board in exclud ing from the public schools a pupil not vaccinated