Godfrey v. White

5 N.W. 243, 43 Mich. 171, 1880 Mich. LEXIS 763
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedApril 7, 1880
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 5 N.W. 243 (Godfrey v. White) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Michigan Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Godfrey v. White, 5 N.W. 243, 43 Mich. 171, 1880 Mich. LEXIS 763 (Mich. 1880).

Opinion

Campbell, J.

The bill in this cause was filed to settle the affairs of an alleged partnership wherein the complainants claim an interest of one-third, Alfred D. Bathbone one-fourth, and George H. White and Amos Bathbone the remaining five-twelfths. The other defendants have no interest in the chief controversy. The original arrangements, with slight exceptions, are not in dispute, although there is some difference of claim concerning their legal effect. The chief difference now arises out of claims for personal services of different partners, claims for interest on advances, and some special items of credits and charges. Defendant White sets up want of jurisdiction. The suit was brought in the Superior Court of Grand Bapids, and he. insists the suit is local, and should have been in the circuit court for Kent county.

In the spring of 1865 an agreement was made verbally between complainant Freeman Godfrey, acting really on behalf of himself and his brother Silas, with defendants Amos Bathbone and George H. White, with a view to the acquisition of title to certain lands near Grand Bap-ids, valuable for gypsum beds, and then held in common [174]*174by various owners. During that year the control of the title was completely vested in White and Eathbone. It was understood that complainants should have a third interest and pay a third of the purchase money. It was further understood that Alfred Eathbone, who was then just at the close of his minority, should have a fourth interest. In 1868 conveyances were made vesting in complainants and in Alfred Eathbone record title to those amounts.

The purpose of this purchase of lands was to develop the plaster beds and get out and sell plaster in its various shapes, rough and ground. At first there was no provision made for calcining the gypsum, but after a few years this was added to the other works. Godfrey & Brother had at the beginning, and continued to have, separate plaster mills of their own, which, although claimed by White to have been connected with the common enterprise, are to be regarded as foreign to it.

From 1865 to 1871 the business was continued without any arrangement for calcining. In that year works were set up for that purpose. From that time until 1876, when this bill was filed, the business was carried on in all its branches, and extensive improvements put on the land, and large profits received. In July, 1876, the parties not agreeing, and failing to come to terms, this bill was filed, and the property was put into the hands of a receiver.

During all this interval the books were never balanced, and no accounting was ever had. A considerable part of the charges and credits in controversy never came into any recognized statement.

The absence of any written articles of partnership, and the failure to make any such entries as would bear upon the terms of the business, must be regarded as the cause of this litigation. Nearly all of the questions we are called upon to determine should have been easily settled by the partnership books, if they had been kept as they ought to have been.

The bill set forth the partnership on the terms already [175]*175referred to, carried on under the name of George H. White & Co., one object being to prevent the appearance of any common interest with Godfrey & Brother, the parties supposing an appearance of competition might help them. Complainants set out various services done by them in the business, and averred as a special ground of pecuniary allowance to them the turning over of a large amount of orders for plaster from Godfrey & Brother to the firm, for which a claim was made of $25,000, and also various other contracts with outside parties, on which similar credit was demanded. A claim was also made for personal services.

Defendants filed an answer and cross-bill admitting the common interest and business, .but denying it was a partnership. These pleadings claimed that Godfrey & Brother’s calcine business was to be combined with the other, and should be joined in the accounting. There were some other special allegations which need not be repeated here, but which may be referred to in another connection as far as necessary.

After issue had been joined under the cross-bill and preparations made to ascertain the truth of some facts in it, a consent decree was made on the 9th of June, 1877, for the submission to a jury of the two main questions — -first, of a partnership; and second, whether it included Godfrey & Brother’s calcine business.

On July 18, 1877, when these issues came on to be heard, a new decree was made by consent, dismissing the cross-bill, and directing an accounting to be had on the theory of the original bill. . It was found there was such a partnership as there set up, “ in which the interest of Freeman Godfrey and Silas Godfrey was and is one-third, and the interest of Amos Bathbone, Alfred D. Bathbone, and George H. White was and is two-thirds.”

•Subsequently, in November, 1877, the court allowed amendments of the pleadings setting up claims for personal services on both sides and interest on advances, and ordered, by way of further directions, that in the [176]*176accounting there should be a separate finding as to each of the defendants.

It is not very important, in our opinion, to consider the precise extent to which the parties or court could go beyond the terms of the consent decrees. It does not seem to us that either of the amendments was beyond the fair scope of the accounting. If the matters referred to had appeared on the books, this would be very manifest. And while, from a technical reading of the decree, it might perhaps be claimed that the firm consisted of two members — Godfrey and Brother jointly being one, and White and the Bathbones jointly .the other — there can be no harm done by making an apportionment among the several defendants so far as relates to the strictly partnership business, if it will not confuse the accounts. In the present case we think this may be done to a certain extent, at least. It could not include separate interests not concerning the firm at all.

The court below in the final decree not only settled the individual interests in the assets, but required the land to be divided and partitioned in described parcels, and the remaining assets distributed in accordance with the finding of the court on the proper balances.,

An important preliminary question is presented concerning the actual extent of the assets. We are called on to determine whether the real estate is partnership assets, and also whether it is to be regarded as purchased entire for the firm in the outset, or as furnished by the respective partners as their separate property, each interest being treated as several.

We have no doubt from the testimony and from the conveyances of 1868, made some three years after the business was commenced, that it was intended to consider each set of tenants-in-common as turning in their respective interests in a fixed proportion to the general business. At that time, when there was no attempt made to balance the accounts, complainants received a [177]*177conveyance of one-third, and Alfred Bathbone of one-fourth. There can be no doubt this showed them to be tenants-in-common in the strictest sense at that time, so far as the documentary title went.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
5 N.W. 243, 43 Mich. 171, 1880 Mich. LEXIS 763, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/godfrey-v-white-mich-1880.