Bonham v. Coe

249 A.D. 428, 292 N.Y.S. 423, 1937 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9612
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedJanuary 13, 1937
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 249 A.D. 428 (Bonham v. Coe) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bonham v. Coe, 249 A.D. 428, 292 N.Y.S. 423, 1937 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9612 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1937).

Opinion

Edgcomb, J.

On April 10, 1928, Edwin A, Scott, executor of the last will and testament of his wife, Lucy Kerr Scott, deceased, [431]*431exchanged a farm in Cattaraugus county, belonging to the estate, for an apartment house in the city of Rochester, which was burdened with mortgages aggregating $35,850, held by the Albany Savings Bank and the Union Trust Company of Rochester, the successor of the National Bank of Rochester. From time to time thereafter the executor paid to the respective banks moneys belonging to the estate to apply upon the interest and principal of these mortgages.

Claiming that. the interchange of properties' was illegal and void, and that the payments made upon the mortgages were a misappropriation of trust funds, plaintiff, the only child of the decedent and the residuary legatee under her will, brought this representative action to set aside the transfers, and to recover the moneys thus expended.

While the plaintiff could compel the executor to account for the full value of decedent’s property, she was not confined to such remedy. Ordinarily she would have no independent cause of action, either in her own right or that of the estate, to recover moneys or property wrongfully disposed of by the executor, but if the executor, after due demand, refused to bring such an action, plaintiff could properly do so. (Agne v. Schwab, 123 App. Div. 746; McQuaide v. Perot, 223 N. Y. 75, 79, 80; Harvey v. McDonnell, 113 id. 526.)

One who receives property, knowing it to be the subject of a trust, and to have been transferred in violation of the trustee’s duty or power, takes it subject to the right of the trustee, and also of the cestui que trust, to reclaim possession thereof, or to recover for its conversion. (Zimmerman v. Kinkle, 108 N. Y. 282, 287; Wetmore v. Porter, 92 id. 76, 82; New York City Employees’ Retirement System v. Eliot, 267 id. 193, 202.)

By her will decedent gave her executor power to sell any real estate of which she died seized. This power, however, was not broad enough to authorize an exchange of such property for other real estate. (Trimboli v. Kinkel, 226 N. Y. 147, 149; Turco v. Trimboli, 152 App. Div. 431, 432; Woerz v. Rademacher, 120 N. Y. 62, 68; Moran v. James, 21 App. Div. 183, 185.)

No better reason for the rule limiting the effect of a power of sale to a transfer for cash, or its equivalent, could be found than in the present case. Instead of a sale upon a conservative basis, we have a highly speculative transaction. The upkeep of the apartment, to say nothing of any payment of principal or interest on the mortgages, aggregated $20,296.02 from April 10, 1928, until May or June, 1933, when it was taken over by a receiver appointed in a mortgage foreclosure action, or $1,944.52 more than [432]*432the gross income received from the property. The law will not countenance so hazardous a transaction, unless it is expressly authorized by the will itself. That was not done here.

The method employed by the executor to bring about the exchange of these properties was involved and complicated. On March 23, 1928, the executor fell into the hands of a real estate agent by the name of Dege. The defendants Jacob Katz and Morris Zamos owned an apartment house in the city of Rochester which they had listed for sale with the defendants Ireland and Barron. The agents got together in an endeavor to make a sale of both pieces of property. Mr. Scott, individually, and not as executor of his wife’s estate, signed an offer to trade the farm for the Rochester property. Three days later this offer was accepted, not by Katz and Zamos, the owners of the property, but by Cosmo Coe, a dummy, who was brought into the picture by Barron, and who signed the various instruments required to complete the transfer without consideration, and merely as a favor to Barron.

On April 10, 1928, the parties got together and closed their deal. Mr. Scott, as executor of his wife’s estate, executed a deed of the farm to Cosmo Coe, and Coe gave back a mortgage for $5,000. This mortgage constituted no part of the purchase price of the property, but was treated as a loan. Scott drew his personal check for $3,225.10 to the order of Coe’s attorney, and assigned to Coe a mortgage for $1,500, which was held by him as guardian for the plain biff on property situated in Genesee county. The balance of the loan was taken care of by certain adjustments for expenses. Coe never had possession of this check; the attorney indorsed it to the order of Katz and Zamos, and delivered it to them. Katz and Zamos then deeded the apartment house to Coe, and Coe gave back to his grantors a purchase-money mortgage for $21,000. Coe then deeded the apartment house to Mr. Scott individually, and Scott and his second wife, Lillian L. Scott, immediately turned around and transferred the property to himself as executor of the last will of Laura Kerr Scott. In this latter deed the grantee assumed and agreed to pay the two mortgages held by the Albany Savings Bank, aggregating $14,850.

Katz and Zamos were indebted to the National Bank of Rochester upon two notes in the aggregate sum of $18,090, and they assigned the $21,000 mortgage which had just been given to them to the bank as collateral security for their indebtedness.

On September 28, 1928, the National Bank of Rochester was merged with the Union Trust Company of Rochester, and the interest of the former institution in the $21,000 mortgage has been assigned to the Union Trust Company

[433]*433The court has found that the executor has paid $11,122 from the funds of the estate to apply upon the mortgage assigned to the Union Trust Company, and $5,752.65 to apply upon the principal and interest of the Albany Savings Bank mortgages.

The court has also found, as well it might, that the devious and roundabout way in which this transfer of properties was accomplished, and the giving of these various deeds, was all a part of one transaction, and that the executor had no power or authority to make any contract for the exchange of property belonging to the estate for other real estate, and that the deeds of the apartment house from Coe and wife to Scott, and from Scott individually to himself as executor, and the deed of the Cattaraugus farm from Scott, as executor, to Coe, are null and void, and without legal effect, and should lie canceled and discharged of record. For some unexplained reason the judgment does not follow the findings in this regard; it contains no such provision.

The illegality of the transfer, however, does not, as matter of law, give plaintiff a right to recover from Katz and Zamos the $3,225.10 received by them as a part of the consideration for the apartment house, or to recall the money paid to the banks on their mortgages. That can only be done if the recipients took these payments with notice or knowledge that they were trust funds, and that such funds had been improperly diverted. Mere knowledge of the source of the money is not sufficient — there must also be knowledge of the violation of a trust duty. Actual knowledge is not necessary. If the recipients were put on notice, either actual or constructive, that is sufficient. If the defendants, or any of them, received these payments with notice of their nature, and of their diversion, the recipients became thereby trustees by operation of law, and are accountable as such. (Tucker v. Weeks,

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Bluebook (online)
249 A.D. 428, 292 N.Y.S. 423, 1937 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9612, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bonham-v-coe-nyappdiv-1937.