Case ID: misc_113/html/0522-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bijur, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Frank H. Fruchtman, Respondent, v. Max E. Klein, Appellant.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term, First Department,
    November Term
    — Filed December, 1920.)
    Gantes and gaming — when money loaned cannot be recovered.
    Money knowingly loaned to be used in a gambling game cannot be recovered back.
    Appeal by defendant from a judgment in favor of plaintiff, after a trial by a judge in the Municipal Court of the city of New York, borough of Manhattan, second district, without a jury.
    Paul M. Abrahams, for appellant.
    M. Michael Edelstein, for respondent.
   Bijur, J.

This action was brought to recover the sum of $815 claimed by plaintiff to have been loaned to defendant, under the following circumstances: Plaintiff and defendant together with others had been engaging in a gambling game at a private house. Plaintiff testified that he stopped playing at a certain stage of the game and went into another room. Shortly thereafter defendant, who had already borrowed $300 during the game, came to him and said: Let me have $200 more, and if I lose that I am going to quit. ’ ’ As plaintiff did not have $200 but only two bills of the denomination of $500 each, he loaned the defendant one of these bills. Under these circumstances, the plaintiff manifestly had knowledge that as to $200 of the loan and the $300 previously loaned, the defendant was borrowing the same for the purpose of gambling with it, and upon the authority of Ruckman v. Bryan, 3 Den. 340, such a loan being for an illegal purpose is not recoverable. Fifteen dollars was borrowed for an entirely separate purpose.

Judgment must, therefore, be modified by reducing the same to $315 with appropriate interest and costs, and as so modified, affirmed, with $10 costs of this appeal to appellant.

Whitaker and Mullan, JJ., concur.

Judgment modified and as so modified affirmed, with ten dollars costs of this appeal to appellant.