Case ID: minn_41/html/0506-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

A. P. Peterson vs. N. P. Nelson.
    October 18, 1889.
    Action on a promissory note for $50, brought in the municipal5 court of Minneapolis. Defence that defendant employed plaintiff,, who was a real-estate broker, to sell or trade for him a farm in Cottonwood county; that plaintiff represented that he had 800 shares of stock in Michigan and Wisconsin iron mines, of the market value of $2.50 per share, which he would procure to be transferred to plaintiff in exchange for the farm, and that the shares were regular stock in regularly organized corporations, and were actually selling in market, and were worth $2,000; that the defendant knew nothing of mining stocks and so informed plaintiff, and, relying on plaintiff's-representations, delivered to plaintiff a deed of the farm to one E. G.. Heydlauff as grantee, who placed it on record, and has since conveyed the land to bona fide purchasers; that the plaintiff’s representations were false and fraudulent, as plaintiff knew when he made them; that on delivery of the deed the plaintiff procured and delivered to defendant what pretended to be and what plaintiff represented to be 200 shares in the Winona Iron Mining Co., 300 shares in the Nagonob Iron Mining Co., and 300 shares in the Ohio Mining Co., and the defendant agreed to pay him $50 as commission, and gave the note in suit therefor. The answer further alleges that the certificates were of no value; that no such companies were incorporated or intended to be, nor were any mines owned by them, all which was known to plaintiff, who made the representations knowing them to be false, and conspiring with Heydlauff to defraud defendant; that the farm was worth $500 over incumbrances, for which sum defendant asks judgment. A verdict was directed for plaintiff, and the defendant appeals from an order refusing a new trial.
    The following is a copy of one of the certificates, all of which were in the same form:
    “No. 152. 50 shares.
    “The Nagonob Iron Mining Company. Assessable.
    “This is to certify that N. P. Nelson is owner of fifty shares of assessable stock in the Nagonob Iron Mining Company, to be formed when a lease shall have been procured on the N. W. J of N. E. £ of sec. 15, Town 47, Range 45 west, Michigan, and to be known as the Nagonob Iron Mining Company, and to be stocked at 40,000 shares of a par value of twenty-five dollars each, and the holder of this certificate will be entitled to the above number of shares of the stock of said company, upon surrendering this certificate.
    “R. G. Heydlauep,
    
      Secretary."
    
    
      Robert Christensen, for appellant.
    
      Peterson é Grotophorst, for respondent.
   By the Court.

As the certificates on their face merely purport to entitle the holder, in certain contingencies, to stock in corporations to be thereafter organized, the only actionable representation alleged was the one as to value, and as to that there was an entire absence of evidence tending to prove its falsity. The court was therefore right in directing a verdict for plaintiff.

Order affirmed.