Ruggles v. Helfrich

123 P. 369, 162 Cal. 553, 1912 Cal. LEXIS 568
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedApril 10, 1912
DocketS.F. No. 5990.
StatusPublished

This text of 123 P. 369 (Ruggles v. Helfrich) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ruggles v. Helfrich, 123 P. 369, 162 Cal. 553, 1912 Cal. LEXIS 568 (Cal. 1912).

Opinion

MELVIN, J.

This is an appeal by one of two interpleading creditors from a judgment in favor of the other and from the order denying a motion for a new trial.

Ruggles, who was president of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board and as such officer the trustee of five thousand dollars realized from the sale of a suspended member’s place on the said board, brought this action, in accordance with the provisions of section 386 of the Code of Civil Procedure to compel the defendants to interplead regarding their right to the sum of $437 to which each made claim. He alleged that he had no claim upon the money, and that he was ignorant of the respective rights of the defendants. He offered to deposit and did deposit the money in court. Each defendant filed a cross-complaint; their claims were litigated and judgment was rendered in favor of Cora A. Helfrich, a creditor of one Robert Romer. She claimed the money by virtue of an attachment and a subsequent levy of execution in a suit against Robert Romer. The other defendant, who is appellant here, is the mother of said Robert Romer. She sought to establish title by an assignment from her son antedating respondent Helfrich’s attachment.

The first assignment of error made by appellant is that her demurrer to the complaint should have been sustained, but without quotation from the complaint we may say that it sufficiently complies with the requirements of section 386 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

As before stated, A. B. Ruggles was president of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board. Article XIII of the constitution of the board provides that any member who has been suspended for six months and has not made a satisfactory settlement of his contracts in the board shall be deprived of all privileges of membership “and his seat shall revert to the board and shall be appropriated to satisfy his creditors in the *555 board.” The article further provides a calling by the president of the board of a meeting of the creditors in the board of the delinquent member and the presentation of their claims to said president. Then follows the enactment that the "president in all such cases shall be ex officio a trustee for such person and for his creditors in the board, and the said trustee shall be vested with all the rights and privileges formerly held by such person in the board, and shall dispose of the same in the same manner that a person retiring in good standing may dispose of his seat and privileges. The proceeds of any such disposition so made shall be devoted by the said trustee to discharging the obligations due by such person to members of the board.” The rest of the article pertains to the disposition of the surplus, if any, or the prorating by the trustee of the proceeds of the sale if they be insufficient to pay all the debts .of the ousted member due to his associates. It is agreed by all parties that the seat of one J. B. Hill was sold, pursuant to said article XIII of the constitution of the Stock and Exchange Board on December 12, 1906, and at that time there came into the possession of A. B. Ruggles, as president of said board, the sum of five thousand dollars as the proceeds of this sale; that said J. B. Hill was indebted to Robert Romer in the sum of $437; and that Ruggles holds possession of said sum in his capacity as trustee.

Alphqnsine Romer’s purported assignment from her son bears date July 27, 1906, and is as follows:—

“For value received I hereby sell, assign, transfer and set over unto Alphonsine Romer all sums of money belonging to me, in the hands of the San Francisco Stock & Exchange Board from the said Hill for me. Said sum being about $437.00 as found owing from said Hill to me by said Board.

Robert Romer.”

It is admitted that notice of this alleged assignment was not served upon the San Francisco Sf'oek & Exchange Board by delivery to the assistant secretary until February 25, 1908, more than a year after service of attachment in the ease of Cora A. Helfrich v. Robert Romer, and only three days before the levy of execution in that case. The court, while making no finding of actual fraud, did find that the attachment, served February 9, 1907, was prior to any assignment made by Romer to his mother, although both of them testified that *556 said purported assignment was made about the time of its date, July 27, 1906. The finding was justified by the evidence for several reasons. In the first place, the late delivery of the assignment to the board scarcely comported with the declarations by appellant and her son of its early existence. Secondly, Bobert Bomer commenced a suit on December 12, 1906, against Hill and the San Francisco Stock & Exchange Board as defendants, in which he asserted that all of the proceeds of the sale of Hill’s seat belonged to him, and he prosecuted that suit until final judgment against him on October 24, 1907. Bobert Bomer also made formal and solemn affidavit in December, 1907, in the suit of Helfrich v. Bomer that the $437 was his property. And finally, the instrument itself is inconsistent with the admitted facts in the case, for while it is dated two days after Hill’s suspension from the board, the sale of Hill’s membership did not occur until months later,— namely, on December 12, 1906, and there were no “sums of money belonging to” Bomer either in the custody of the board or the possession of A. B. Buggies at the purported date of thé assignment. In view of these undisputed facts, the court below would have been afflicted with wondrous credulity if any other finding had been made.

But the all important question in the ease is raised by appellant’s attack upon the sufficiency of the levies of attachment and execution. The complaint alleged: “That at the time when said sum of five thousand dollars so came into plaintiff’s possession, said J. B. Hill was indebted to one Bobert Bomer in the sum of $437.00 and plaintiff as trustee for the said J. B. Hill and his creditors took possession of said sum and ever since has held and now holds possession of said sum of $437.00 in his said capacity as trustee.” This averment was adopted by respondent Cora A. Helfrich in her cross-complaint. It was also alleged in the complaint, adopted as part of the said cross-complaint, and proved at the trial, that the notices both of attachment and of execution were directed to the San Francisco Stock & Exchange Board, although served upon A. B. Buggies as its president. Appellant advanced the proposition (and reserved the point by timely demurrer, objections to evidence, and specifications of alleged error), that there had never been any proper and valid levy upon the trustee, and that therefore the fund was available for *557 payment to her when notice of the assignment to her from her son was served. To this argument two answers are made. One is that appellant is in no position to attack the judgment, even under her own theory, because at the date of the assignment of his interest by her son to her, the board held no moneys of J. B. Hill, and at the date of the service of said assignment on the board the money here sought was held, according to her views, not by that organization, but by the trustee A. B. Ruggles. The other answer is that the levies were effective because, although Ruggles was nominally the trustee, he was such merely

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Bluebook (online)
123 P. 369, 162 Cal. 553, 1912 Cal. LEXIS 568, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ruggles-v-helfrich-cal-1912.