Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/71

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
NORTHERN DAKOTA ELEV. CO. v. CLARK & SMART.
31

such creditors and the person whose property, without his consent, had enriched the estate. Reasoning along this line, we would have a preference in favor of general creditors as against one who by a tort had caused a liability against his estate without enriching it, as in case of an assault and battery, libel, slander, seduction or malicious prosecution. But no such preference exists; nor can it exist. The Wisconsin decisions sustaining this tule have been made by a divided court, in every instance three of the judges’ favoring the rule and two of them dissenting. See McLeod v. Evans, (Wis.) 28 N. W. Rep. 173, 214; Bowers v. Evans, (Wis.) 36 N. W. Rep. 631; Francis v. Evans, (Wis.) 33 N. W. Rep. 93. The case of People v. City Bank of Rochester, 9 N. Y. 32; is distinguished in a later case,—Cavin v. Gleason, (N.Y. App.) 11 N. E. Rep. 504,—the court saying of it that it was not claimed in that case that the money sought to be followed had not in some form gone into the hands of the receiver. In this latter case the right to follow money was held to be lost by the payment of that money to a third person, it being no longer possible to trace it, except in the hands of one who, having taken it in the ordinary course of business, could not be compelled to refund it. Certainly the money cannot be said to be in any form in the hands of one who has paid it out. That the New York court of appeals is in no manner committed to this new doctrine invoked in this case is apparent in its language in the case in 11 N. E. Rep. 504: “The trust fund, with the single exception mentioned, was misappropriated by White to the payment of his private debts prior to the assignment. It cannot be traced into the property in the hands of the assignee, for the plain reason that it is shown to have gone to the creditors of White in satisfaction of their debts. The court below seem to have proceeded upon a supposed equity springing from the circumstances that by the application of the fund to the payment of White’s creditors the assigned estate was relieved pro tanto from debts which otherwise would have been charged upon it, and that thereby the remaining creditors, if entitled to distribution without regard to the petitioner’s claim, will be benefited.