Morris Plan Industrial Bank v. Richards

12 Conn. Supp. 477, 1944 Conn. Super. LEXIS 51
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas
DecidedApril 22, 1944
DocketFile No. 44488
StatusPublished

This text of 12 Conn. Supp. 477 (Morris Plan Industrial Bank v. Richards) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Morris Plan Industrial Bank v. Richards, 12 Conn. Supp. 477, 1944 Conn. Super. LEXIS 51 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1944).

Opinion

CULLINAN, J.

A deliberate and admitted fraud, arising from gross misstatements of fact concerning his true financial condition, induced the plaintiff lending institution, on March 23, 1931, to loan the defendant the sum of $720. In his application for this loan the defendant represented himself as being free from outstanding “judgments, garnishments and other legal proceedings” and detailed his total debts as $300. Some measures of his wilfulness may be drawn from the fact that when these representations were made he was then indebted to Chisholm and Chapman, by reason of a judgment entered in the State of New York on January 8, 1931, in the sum of $1,361.20; to United States Fidelity and Guarantee Company, by reason of a judgment entered in the State of New York on January 27, 1931, in the sum of $201.45; to White Plains City and Suburban Pine and Oak Mills, Inc., by reason of a judgment entered in the State of New York on January 23, 1930, in the sum of 403.81; and to several other judgment creditors by reason of New York judgments aggregating an additional $1,000.

Thus, without any intimation of this elaborate and conscious scheme to mislead, the plaintiff, relying upon the deceptive application, approved the loan and paid over the funds, at the same time requiring the defendant to execute a typical promisory note. By the terms of this note, its first of 12 instalment payments fell due on- April 23, 1931. This [479]*479payment was not met by the defendant until June 9, 1931, when, after considerable urging, he reduced the obligation by $60. Thereafter no further payments were made by him.

In as much as the transaction had been consummated in the State of New York and in as much as the obligation was in complete default, the plaintiff, in the latter months of 1931, instituted action against the defendant in the New York courts wherein was entered, on December 22, 1931, a judgment against him in the principal sum of $660 with accrued costs of $39.50. No part of this judgment, save $70, ultimately secured from a co-maker whose signature had been required as a condition precedent to the loan, has been paid.

Following the entry of judgment, executions were issued on two occasions, both being returned wholly unsatisfied. Thereafter, in 1934, the defendant was served with a show cause order, citing him to appear for examination in supplementary proceedings, a New York device designed to assist in the location of assets. This formal inquiry was conducted with the defendant under oath, on September 21, 1934, by an examining attorney of the plaintiff corporation, and, as might be expected, revealed nothing in the way of assets. However, among the many questions propounded during this examination, the following significant ones were asked of and answered by the defendant:

Q. “Do you own a house?”
A. “No. My wife did own property at 82 Bank Street, White Plains, and also home, at 16 Lafayette Street, White Plains. Both properties foreclosed in 1931.”
Q. “Have you any judgments against you?”
A. “About $5,000. Judgments held by various contractors and builders arose out of work done on the property owned by my wife which was foreclosed.”

Frustrated in his quest for assets, the plaintiff’s examining attorney took no further steps toward satisfying the judgment, permitting the defendant’s examination to stand unchallenged, unverified and unquestioned.

Thus the matter rested until January 25, 1939, when the defendant filed in the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, a voluntary petition in [480]*480bankruptcy, listing, among liabilities, not only the plaintiff’s judgment, but all the judgments which were outstanding and concealed at the time of the loan. In September, 1940, that court granted the defendant a discharge in bankruptcy.

On May 18, 1943, the pending Connecticut litigation was instituted, detailing, as it does, the making of the loan to the defendant on March 23, 1931; the fraudulent circumstances under which the loan was made; and the names of the judgment creditors to whom the defendant was indebted on March 23, 1931, and whose identities were fraudulently concealed from the plaintiff. The plaintiff now seeks to recover the unpaid balance of its loan with accrued interest. Its complaint sounds in fraud; it is not suing on the New York judgment..

To this fraud action, the defendant has offered a number of defenses, particularly stressing the operation of the Statute of Limitations of the State of New York as a bar to recovery. Subdivision 5 of section 48 of the New York Civil Practice Act provides that an action to procure a judgment on the ground of fraud must be commenced within six years after the cause of action has accrued and that the cause of action in such a case is not deemed to have accrued until the discovery by the plaintiff, or the person under whom he claims, of the facts constituting the fraud. Talmadge vs. United States Shipping Board, etc., 54 F. (2d) 240, 243, in construing the above section, holds: “It is enough under section 48 (5) that the victim of the fraud shall be put on notice of the practice upon him; he need not know the full details.”

A determination of the date on which the plaintiff knew, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known of the defendant’s fraudulent “practice upon it”, seems to constitute a fundamental necessity.

The plaintiff, on the one hand, contends it was unaware of the defendant’s fraud until he filed his bankruptcy schedules detailing dates and amounts of the judgments which antedated its loan. This filing, of course, was in 1939. Therefore, says the plaintiff, this action has been seasonably brought within the six-year period, since the fraud was not discovered until 1939 and since this action was instituted in 1943.

On the other hand, the defendant argues that in 1934, during the New York supplementary proceedings, he, while under [481]*481oath, disclosed outstanding judgments against himself in the amount of $5,000. Further, says the defendant, he disclosed that these judgments had their roots in services rendered and materials furnished him in connection with his wife’s properties. Likewise the defendant points to his statement, during the supplementary proceedings, that the titles to his wife’s properties had been foreclosed in 1931. Thus, it is argued, since the disclosed judgments arose out of construction and building operations on the properties of Mrs. Richards and since titles to those properties had been foreclosed in 1931, it must have been obvious that the judgments preceded the foreclosures and, in all likelihood, preceded the application for loan. Briefly, then, the defendant claims that in 1934, during his examination by the plaintiffs attorney, he made admissions and disclosures, which, if pursued with reasonable diligence, would or should have brought his 1931 deceit to light.

' The defendant’s position is persuasive. One cannot escape the conviction that had the plaintiff, after the defendant’s examination in 1934, analyzed and dissected its results, then, most certainly, it could and should have known of the judgments which antedated its loan. Thus, had it employed ordinary diligence and vigilance, the defendant’s fraud would and should have been readily detected and a fraud action seasonably pursued.

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Bluebook (online)
12 Conn. Supp. 477, 1944 Conn. Super. LEXIS 51, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/morris-plan-industrial-bank-v-richards-pactcompl-1944.