Wiseman v. Richardson

118 P.2d 605, 154 Kan. 245, 1941 Kan. LEXIS 44
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedNovember 8, 1941
DocketNo. 35,126
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 118 P.2d 605 (Wiseman v. Richardson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wiseman v. Richardson, 118 P.2d 605, 154 Kan. 245, 1941 Kan. LEXIS 44 (kan 1941).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Dawson, C. J.:

The late Lillie M. Wiseman, of Topeka, plaintiff, now represented by her executors, brought suit against Emma K. Richardson, defendant, to recover $3,250, alleging that this sum was in possession of the defendant but was the property of the plaintiff.

The pleadings, exhibits, and evidence of the parties developed no material dispute of fact, and may be summarized thus:

In 1936 Lillie M. Wiseman was a wealthy widow about 70 years old who resided at the Jayhawk hotel in Topeka. One J. E. George, who was then a desk clerk in that hotel, won her confidence to such an extent that on May 29, 1936, she handed over to him about $140,650 in securities, most of which were United States bonds. George promptly turned some of these securities into cash; and anticipating that his right thereto might be drawn in question he called on Lawrence J. Richardson, a Topeka attorney, and handed him $5,000 in twenty-dollar bills as a retainer fee, saying, “I am liable to have considerable business, and on the other hand I might not have so much.”

Richardson took the money home and gave it to this defendant (who was then his wife) to keep for him. Within a few days defendant returned $1,000 of this money to Richardson at his request. Some months later defendant brought suit against her husband for a divorce, which was granted; and in the judgment the trial court awarded to Mrs. Richardson as permanent alimony the sum of $3,250 out of the $4,000 her husband had entrusted to her, and ordered that the balance, to wit $750, should be delivered to her husband.

It is this $3,250 awarded to Mrs. Richardson in the divorce suit which Mrs. Wiseman sought to recover in this action. As matter of inducement plaintiff alleged that in the federal court she had recovered judgment in an aggregate amount of $167,399.76 against J. E. George for the return of the bonds which he had procured from her and for the proceeds of those he had sold and squandered.

In the divorce suit Mrs. Wiseman was permitted to file an intervening petition in which she narrated how George wrongfully held some $200,000 worth of bonds and other securities belonging to her, [247]*247that she had commenced an action against him to recover that property, that such action was pending in the federal court, that Lawrence J. Richardson was attorney for George, and that intervenor was informed and believed that Lawrence J. Richardson had a safety deposit box in a Topeka bank containing a portion of intervenor’s bonds and securities. She prayed for a restraining order forbidding the bank to deliver to Richardson any of intervenor’s bonds and securities, that the sheriff should be ordered to examine the contents of the safety deposit box, and that any and all bonds and securities- alleged to belong to intervenor should be held in custodia legis until final hearing on the intervening petition and that it be adjudged that any and all such bonds and securities as described in her intervening petition be declared to be her property and delivered to her and that neither plaintiff nor defendant in the divorce case had any right or interest therein.

Nothing further was done in the divorce case touching this in- . tervening petition. No issues were joined on its allegations. No motion for judgment was filed by the intervenor. At the conclusion of the divorce action Mrs. Richardson was granted a divorce; $3,250 of the money in her hands was decreed to her as permanent alimony, and the balance was ordered returned to Lawrence J. Richardson, from whom she had received it. In the same decree the restraining order issued at the instance of the intervenor was dissolved and her intervening petition dismissed.

Mrs. Wiseman’s suit against J. E. George which was tried in the federal district court resulted in a judgment in her favor for $167,-399.75, which was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals (see George v. Wiseman, 98 F. 2d 923). That judgment has not been fully satisfied. And so Mrs. Wiseman brought this action against Mrs. Richardson alleging that the $3,250 awarded to her as permanent alimony was in fact plaintiff’s property.

In her petition plaintiff alleged that when George had fraudulently deprived her of the bonds and other securities he converted a portion of that property into money and delivered $3,250 of that money to Lawrence J. Richardson; that Richardson had full knowledge of plaintiff’s ownership of the currency and securities, and that he delivered that sum of $3,250 to Mrs. Richardson “without any consideration and with full knowledge of the ownership of said currency and said bonds in the plaintiff.”

Defendant’s answer alleged that the only money she had received [248]*248from Lawrence J. Richardson was the $5,000, later reduced to $4,000, as narrated above, and that $3,250 of that amount was decreed to her as permanent alimony in the divorce suit, and that at no time had defendant received any property or money belonging to plaintiff.

In plaintiff’s reply she alleged that—

“After she filed her intervening petition in said action she was given no opportunity for a hearing on the same and that her right and title to the $4,000, which she claimed and which was delivered by the said Lawrence J. Richardson to the defendant herein, was not litigated, but that in the absence of the plaintiff herein and her attorney, said intervening petition was dismissed without any prosecution and without any issues being joined between the plaintiff herein and the defendant herein and without any evidence being introduced by the plaintiff herein on said intervening petition.”

A jury was waived and the cause was tried by the court from time to time between December 28, 1939, and April 25, 1940, after which . the court took the cause under advisement until June 15, 1940, at which time it gave judgment for defendant. Plaintiff filed a motion for a new trial on several grounds. This motion was heard on August 10, 1940, and was taken under advisement until September 23, at which time it was overruled. Plaintiff served notice of appeal on November 21, and filed it on November 22.

We have particularized as to these dates because at the threshold of this appeal defendant moves to dismiss on the ground that it was not taken within the statutory time. The civil code as amended in 1937 provides that the appeal shall be perfected within two months from the date of the judgment or order from which the appeal is taken. (G. S. 1939 Supp. 60-3309.) Obviously this appeal from the judgment rendered on June 15, which was not perfected until November 22, was too late. However, any trial errors to which the motion for a new trial was directed, and which was not decided until September 23, are still open to our review. How much that leaves open for this review may become clear as we proceed;

On behalf of appellant the proposition is advanced that the judgment of the federal court in George v. Wiseman is binding on the parties in the present case. The soundness of that contention might be subject to serious question since Mrs. Richardson was not a party to that litigation, but the point is immaterial here since it has no apparent bearing on the issues in this appeal.

Appellant’s second proposition is that Mrs. Wiseman’s bonds and their proceeds in the hands of J. E. George were a trust fund. That [249]*249point may be conceded, but it, too, is of no apparent consequence in the instant case, since Mrs.

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Bluebook (online)
118 P.2d 605, 154 Kan. 245, 1941 Kan. LEXIS 44, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wiseman-v-richardson-kan-1941.