Hilliard v. Bramhall

6 Mass. App. Div. 76
CourtMassachusetts District Court, Appellate Division
DecidedMarch 31, 1941
StatusPublished

This text of 6 Mass. App. Div. 76 (Hilliard v. Bramhall) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts District Court, Appellate Division primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hilliard v. Bramhall, 6 Mass. App. Div. 76 (Mass. Ct. App. 1941).

Opinion

Pettingell, J.

The plaintiff, a brother of the defendant’s testatrix, caused to be sent to her annually certain portions of his income. He now brings this action of contract to recover the amounts so sent to her from January, 1922, to November, 1934. There are three counts in the declaration but the plaintiff now relies on only one, the [77]*77first, for money had and received. The defendant’s answer is a general denial and the Statute of Limitations.

At the proper time the defendant requested three rulings, as follows:

(1) The count for money had and received does not lie for the recovery by a plaintiff of gifts of money made from the plaintiff to the defendant.

The trial judge granted this request but with the following comment:

“However, I find as a fact that the sums of money which the plaintiff sent, or caused to be sent, to the defendant’s testatrix, did not constitute gifts nor were they accepted as gifts by the defendant’s testatrix.”
(2) The Statute of Limitations is a complete bar to the plaintiff’s recovery of any sums advanced more than six years prior to the date of the plaintiff’s writ.

This request was denied by the trial judge who made the following finding of fact as a part of his denial:

“On all the evidence, I find that the plaintiff sent, or caused to be sent, to the defendant’s testatrix the several sums of money set forth in the schedule annexed to the plaintiff’s declaration, which represented a share of the dividends due to the plaintiff and declared by a corporation in which both the plaintiff and defendant’s testatrix were stockholders, upon the following written statement and representation of the defendant’s testatrix: ‘ Thank you for the money which you give me. It is taken care of. If you ever need your share don’t hesitate to say so and it shall be paid to you’; that the plaintiff sent, or caused to be sent, the sums of money because the defendant’s testatrix wrongfully and fraudulently led the plaintiff to believe that she was in need of funds for her comfortable maintenance during the period in which the said sums of money were received by the defendant’s testatrix; [78]*78that the sums of money were not sent by the plaintiff or accepted by the defendant’s testatrix as gifts; that the plaintiff sent, or caused to be sent, the said sums of money to the defendant’s testatrix in reliance upon her promise to take care of the money and to return it to him whenever he needed it upon his request or demand. In view of the above findings of fact, I rule that the plaintiff’s cause of action did not accrue, and that the Statute of Limitations did not commence to run, until the plaintiff was in need of the said sums of money and made a demand thereof, both of which events occurred within six years from the date of the plaintiff’s writ.”
(3) Upon the plaintiff’s own evidence, namely, — that the money he here seeks to recover was gifts made by him to the defendant’s testatrix, without her request, and without any expectation on the part of the plaintiff that they would be repaid, without any demand on the part of the plaintiff against said decedent for repayment, and with no other undertaking on the part of the defendant’s testatrix than the excerpt from her letter dated 17th July, 1921, addressed to the plaintiff, —‘ ‘ Thank you for the money which you give me. It is taken care of. If you ever need your share do not hesitate to say so and it shall be paid to you”; that when the plaintiff ceased making the gifts in 1934, he did so not because he needed the dividends which theretofore had constituted the gifts, but because he then wanted them to accumulate a fund out of which to pay for a Memorial to his long-deceased father; that he brought suit only because in 1938, he discovered an account book which belonged to the defendant’s testatrix in 1929, from which plaintiff discovered that said testatrix in 1929 had assets which aggregated some $50,000; that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover upon any of the counts of the declaration in suit.

This request was disposed of by the trial judge as follows: “Denied.. I do not find the facts embodied in this request.” There was a finding for the plaintiff.

[79]*79The defendant’s contentions are threefold, that the plaintiff was not entitled to recover on a count for money had and received; that the statute of limitations is a bar; that there are inconsistencies in the findings of the trial judge which require a new trial.

Taking up the last contention first, it does not appear from an examination of the report that the defendant has any standing to raise the issue of inconsistencies in the findings. There is nothing in the report to show that in any way, after the finding, the attention of the trial judge was directed to the alleged inconsistencies, or that any steps were taken in the district court to have the alleged error corrected. This could have been done by a motion for the correction of the inconsistencies, DiLorenzo v. Atlantic National Bank, 278 Mass. 321, at 324; or by a motion for a new trial based upon the presence of the inconsistencies, Duralith Corp. v. Leonard, 274 Mass. 397, at 401. Korb v. Albany Carpet Cleaning Co., 301 Mass. 317, at 318. The defendant is not entitled to raise such an issue for the first time in an appellate tribunal. Duralith Corp. v. Leonard, 274 Mass. 397, at 401.

The other contentions of the defendant center around his attack upon the findings of fact made by the trial judge, “that . . . the money which the plaintiff sent . . . did not constitute gifts nor were they accepted as gifts . . ..” and that the testatrix “wrongfully and fraudulently led the plaintiff to believe that she was in need of funds for her comfortable maintenance during the period in which the said sums of money were received by the defendant’s testatrix.” His first move against these findings is by way of a claim that there is no evidence in the report which warrants such findings. Neither is there in the report any[80]*80thing which shows that the defendant raised this issue in the District Court, or that the trial judge has reported it. No one of the three rulings requested by the defendant raises any issues of the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant these findings. The report does not state that it contains all the evidence in the case, but that it contains “all of the evidence material to the questions reported.” Unless the attention of the trial judge is directed by an appropriate request for a ruling to the issue whether the evidence warrants a particular finding, there is no reason for him to report evidence on that issue.

“When the judge acts in the place of judge and jury, as in the present ease, his consideration of the case upon the facts and his finding may likewise involve a ruling of law that such a finding is warranted by the evidence. But a party wishing to raise the question whether such a finding is warranted by the evidence must request a ruling at the trial, before the judge takes the case under consideration on the facts; and within such time as may be prescribed by the rule . . . and cannot raise the question by an exception to the general finding or decision taken after it is made.” Stowell v. H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc., 288 Mass. 555, at 556, 557.

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Bluebook (online)
6 Mass. App. Div. 76, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hilliard-v-bramhall-massdistctapp-1941.