Moseley v. Smith

1935 OK 821, 49 P.2d 775, 173 Okla. 503, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 469
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedSeptember 17, 1935
DocketNo. 24915.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 1935 OK 821 (Moseley v. Smith) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Moseley v. Smith, 1935 OK 821, 49 P.2d 775, 173 Okla. 503, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 469 (Okla. 1935).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

This appeal presents error from the district court of Muskogee county, Okla. Plaintiff in error, C. M. Moseley, was defendant in the trial court, and defendant in error, Maggie Smith, was plaintiff in the trial court. The parties will be referred to as plaintiff and defendant, as they appeared in the lower court.

Plaintiff, a teacher in the public schools of the city of Muskogee, in her second amended bill of particulars, sued defendant and others, as will hereinafter be more fully stated, for having exacted of her usury in violation of the statutes of Oklahoma. To be more specific, she alleged that defendant charged and received from her as interest the sum of $89 for the use of $35 for the space of one year; — something more than .250 por cent. She prayed judgment in double the amount of the interest paid and attorney fees, all as provided by statute sections 13683 and 9524, O. S. 1931. The $35 was not all borrowed at. one and the same time. On one occasion plaintiff borowed $30, for which she paid $6 per month as interest for the period of four months, and then $12 for its use for the next four months. On another, she borrowed $5, for which she agreed to and paid the sum of $1 per month as interest. The subterfuge adopted in an effort to circumvent the usury statute was to go through the form of purchasing plaintiff’s wages, followed by a written assignment thereof. Plaintiff would come in each month, pay $6 on the $30 and $1 on the $5, where-, upon, for the purpose of extending the loan the parties would go through the same formalities as were gone through' in obtaining the loan of the original sums of money. So long as the interest was promptly paid the assignment was never filed with the em ployer, — in the instant case, not until the p’ainliff refused to be bled further was the *504 so-called “assignment of wages” filed with the superintendent of schools of the city of Muskogee. Neither in defendant’s answer nor in his testimony does he deny the correctness of any of the transactions as alleged by plaintiff or that they were consummated through him. His sole defense is that in their consummation he was acting merely as a hired clerk for someone else, who he said was 0. Allen, doing business under the fictitious name of Mont Realty Company, and he prayed, because he was not the principal but merely the clerk or agent of the principal, no judgment should go against him in favor of plaintiff.

In the testimony which he gave on the trial defendant said that at one time, about five years prior, ho had owned -a half interest in the Mont Realty Company, but had disposed of it to his brother-in-law, L. S. Allen, who in turn had sold it to his son, C. Allen, the defendant’s nephew. That his brother-in-law first, then his nephew, had hired him to run the business for them, which he had done continuously since he had disposed of his interest more than five years before. However, he had given no notice to the public of any change in ownership of the Mont Realty Company. The Allens, he said, were citizens and residents of Mississippi, and as there were, according to the records, no tangible assets in Oklahoma belonging to the Mont Realty Company, that company not even having or keeping any books or records, a suit for usury or for that matter any other redress, was a waste of time and money.

It is evident that the originators of the scheme thought they were doubly entrenched or fortified against any legal attack. If the “wage purchase” part of the scheme were declared a cloak to cover up usury, as the trial court upon the testimony found tbe*-it did, any recovery then would be effectually frustrated by the simple expedient of having the alleged owners and operators of the business all nonresidents and the business itself without any tangible assets within the jurisdiction of any Oklahoma court. As already stated, the trial judges before whom the case was tried, one the judge of the city court of Muskogee and the other the judge of the district court of Muskogee county, held the scheme to be a cloak to cover up the charge of usurious interest. After reading the record we think the conclusion reached by the trial judges was supported by the testimony, and their judgment, in-holding the scheme a mere cloak under which to charge plaintiff usurious interest, correct. Other-courts have condemned the same idea or scheme. People v. J. W. Adams & Co. (Cal.) 295 P. 511; Tennessee Finance Co. v. Thompson, 278 Fed. 597 (and eases cited).

This court, in Turney v. Goldberg’s Loan Office, 135 Okla. 147, 274 P. 464, denounced a scheme somewhat analogous. In fact, the defendant in this court does not deny that the lower court’s judgment was correct in this respect. In this court the defendant has presented three assignments of error, which he has briefed. The first is that the trial court erred in overruling defendant’s demurrer to the plaintiff’s petition, the attack of the demurrer being on the sole ground that the plaintiff’s second amended bill of particulars did not state facts sufficient to- constitute a cause of action in favor of plaintiff and against the defendant. In other words, a general demurrer. Second, that the trial court erred in overruling defendant’s demurrer to the plaintiff’s evidence. Third, that there was no pleading or testimony or legal ground upon which plaintiff is entitled to- recover against defendant,, all the transactions upon which plaintiff relies being evidenced by writing, and the defendant not being a party to any' of said written instruments, the judgment rendered by the court is, therefore, contrary to law.

Under these assignments of error it will be necessary to examine the second amended bill of particulars, and incidentally the first amended and original bills of particulars to determine if the facts therein alleged sufficiently state a cause of-action in favor of plaintiff and against the defendant. '

At the outset it must be conceded that plaintiff’s various bills of particulars are not models, and especially in their allegations of the relationship of the defendant to the alleged usurious transactions. The original bill of particulars was filed in the city court of the city of Muskogee. In the caption therein the defendant is “C. Allen, doing business as Mont Realty Company.” In! it is alleged that C. M. Moseley is the manager, representative and agent of said defendant in the city of Muskogee. The prayer is for judgment against O. Allen, doing business as Mont Realty Company. The bill of particulars also charged that C. Allen is a resident of Jackson county, Miss., and a nonresident of Oklahoma. Within a few days after filing the bill of particulars, plaintiff obtained leave from the city 'eburt to make O. M. Moseley a party defendant, and in the same order obtained leave,to file an amended bill of particulars. Thisjshe did. In the caption the defendants are “C. Allen, doing business as Mont Realty Company, and C. M- *505 Moseley, defendants,” and her cause of action is directed against the defendants 0. Allen, doing business as Mont Realty Company, and C. M. Moseley. In the amended bill of particulars she charges the same state of facts as in the original, in so far as the loan transactions are concerned, and how they were consummated, except that she avers that she entered into the usurious agreements with the defendants whereby the said defendants, for the corrupt purpose of receiving and taking a greater sum for the loan of money than 10 per cent., agreed to lend the plaintiff the various sums therein, set forth.

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Bluebook (online)
1935 OK 821, 49 P.2d 775, 173 Okla. 503, 1935 Okla. LEXIS 469, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/moseley-v-smith-okla-1935.