Bussey v. Porter

186 S.E. 826, 182 Ga. 727, 1936 Ga. LEXIS 552
Supreme Court of Georgia·Decided July 2, 1936·No. No. 11015·Published

Opinion

Bussell, Chief Justice.

The first assignment of error complains that the court decreed that Porter was in equity the purchaser of the Blakely paper, and was given a judgment against Bussey-Mabry Manufacturing Company and against both Mabry and Bussey, with a superior lien on the property covered by the Blakely bill of sale. In the action instituted by Zachry, in which he asked that his bill of sale be foreclosed in equity, and for a decree. establishing in his favor a special lien on the property, Bussey intervened and set up that he and Mabry had been partners under the name of Bussey-Mabry Manufacturing Company, but that the partnership had been dissolved, and that there had been no accounting between him and Mabry, and no division of the partnership effects; that Mabry secured his individual debts by pledge of the partnership assets to Zachry, .and also to the Industrial Loan & Investment Company, and that each of these creditors of Mabry individually was asserting a lien against this partnership property. He prayed for an accounting, and for a decree that neither Zachry uot Industrial Loan & Investment Company should assert any claim to the partnership property described in their respective bills of sale superior to Bussey’s rights as a member of the partnership. The intervention of Porter set up that Bussey-Mabry Manufacturing Company owed Blakely a note of a thousand dollars secured by a bill of sale to certain personal property, practically the same as described in the bills of sale to Zachry and the Industrial Loan & Investment Company; that Mabry had proposed to Porter that if Porter would loan or secure for Mabry the money with which to pay Blakely, Mabry in .paying the same to Blakely would get him to transfer and assign the bill of sale as security to Porter, and this was agreed to; that Porter indorsed a note for $1000 for Mabry (Porter being solvent and Mabry insolvent), on which Mabry obtained the $1000 and paid it to Blakely, but there was never any written transfer or assignment of the note or security. Porter praj^ed that the court treat the transfer and assignment as having been made, and that he have a prior lien on the property secured thereby.

It is earnestly insisted by eminent counsel for the plaintiff in error that a stranger who, at the request of one partner after the dissolution of the copartnership, indorses the individual note of a former partner and thereby enables him to procure a sum [734] of money which actually goes to discharge the partnership note secured by a bill of sale, the indorsement being made on the faith of the promise of the partner procuring it that he would obtain from the holder of the partnership note a transfer of the note and its security, for the purpose of securing the stranger, and deliver it to the stranger who indorsed the note, is not to be treated in equity as the purchaser of the partnership note, where no transfer was made, where his dealings were entirely with the former partner, and that the purchaser in equity of the note is not entitled to be subrogated to the rights of the holder of the partnership note, where the facts fail to show that a demand for payment on the note of indorsement has ever been made on the maker or indorser, or that the note has ever become due, or that he has ever paid it. Learned counsel also contend that “Mabry individually borrowed money, and to secure it pledged property belonging to a partnership since dissolved, but of which he was a member,” and asks this question: “In the absence of any contention that the money so borrowed went for the benefit of the partnership, is the creditor of Mabry entitled to a special lien on this partnership property merely because when the partnership was dissolved the property was not removed, but remained in Mabry’s care — Bussey having done no affirmative act to mislead creditors?”

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Bussey v. Porter, 186 S.E. 826, 182 Ga. 727, 1936 Ga. LEXIS 552 (Ga. 1936).

186 S.E. 826 (Bussey v. Porter) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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