Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/299/299mass206.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 04:18:55+00:00

Document:
ELIAS EDINBURG vs. ALLEN SQUIRE COMPANY.
Present: RUGG, C.J., FIELD, DONAHUE, & LUMMUS, JJ.
An appeal from the allowance of a motion for judgment upon the report of an auditor whose findings of fact were to be final did not bring to this court for review a denial of a motion for recommittal of the report; and objections, annexed to the report, to findings and refusals to find presented no questions in addition to those apparent on the face of the report. The owner of a mill building committed no act of conversion merely by locking the building while machinery of a tenant at sufferance was therein and later removing and storing the machinery in the exercise of a right which was his under an agreement between him and the tenant, where there was no demand by the tenant for the property or for an opportunity to remove it, and no refusal by the owner.
TORT. Writ in the Superior Court dated September 4, 1935.
The defendant's motion for judgment upon an auditor's report was allowed by Whiting, J.
M. M. Taylor, for the plaintiff.
G. H. Mirick, D. Whitcomb, & P. R. O'Connell, for the defendant.
FIELD, J. This is an action of tort for conversion of machinery and other personal property. The case was referred to an auditor whose findings of fact were to be final. After the auditor had filed a report the trial judge "found" for the defendant on this report and allowed the defendant's motion for judgment thereon. The plaintiff appealed.
The auditor's report was in effect a case stated (Robinson v. Lyndonville Creamery Association, 284 Mass. 396, 398), and the action of the judge thereon an order for judgment. The case falls, therefore, within one of the classes of cases in which appeal is available. G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 231, Section 96.
The appeal, however, does not bring before us for review the order of the trial judge denying the plaintiff's motion to recommit the report. And the plaintiff's objections, annexed to the report, to findings by the auditor and to his failure to make findings present no question for decision in addition to those apparent on the face of the report. Carbonneau v. Cavanaugh, 290 Mass. 139, 140.
The auditor in his report, after making subsidiary findings of fact, states: "In my view of the law applicable to these facts, I have reached the conclusion that there was no actual conversion on the part of the defendant and I so find." This statement evidently means that the conclusion was based wholly on subsidiary facts found. It is not merely a ruling of law on such facts. It is, rather, a finding of fact, though deducible from other facts found and involving questions of law. Duggan v. Wright, 157 Mass. 228, 231. W. T. Tilden Co. v. Densten Hair Co. 216 Mass. 323, 327. Dobias v. Faldyn, 278 Mass. 52, 58.
MacLeod v. Davis, 290 Mass. 335, 338. The subsidiary findings support this ultimate finding.
for the defendant sent a letter to the attorney for the plaintiff which set forth this oral agreement.
The oral agreement as set forth in the letter was as follows: "Under the understanding reached Edinburg upon the payment of $31.25 to the Allen-Squire Co. is to have the right for one week's time to remove his effects and the machinery, rightful possession of which he claims, from the premises on Cherry Street, Spencer. If at the end of one week's time the property is not removed he may upon the payment of an additional sum of $31.25 have another week's time within which to remove said property. In other words, the Allen-Squire Co. is to permit him to remove the machinery and his property without molestation upon their part. . . . In the event that Edinburg does not pay the stipulated sums as provided herein, to wit, at the rate of $31.25 in advance per week, the Allen-Squire Co. may follow such remedies as it sees fit either with respect to the removal of the property from its premises or locking up the doors, and it will look to Mr. Edinburg for any charges or expenses incurred by it in case it has to remove from its premises."
On September 10, 1929, the plaintiff paid the defendant one week's rent and on September 17 paid another week's rent. The plaintiff made no further weekly payments. During these two weeks he removed some of the machinery and personal property from the Cherry Street mill.
prevented the plaintiff from proceeding further with his work of moving. . . . The rest of the machines and other personal property remained at the Cherry Street mill."
the defendant of the plaintiff's property prior to September 9, 1929, when the oral agreement was entered into between the parties, or even before September 28, 1929, when the defendant locked the mill. After the oral agreement was entered into, the rights of the parties were governed thereby so far as they came within its terms. It is the natural construction of the agreement that the plaintiff was to have two weeks within which to remove his property from the Cherry Street mill if, as was the fact, he made the stipulated payments. But even if this agreement is to be construed as meaning that the plaintiff was to have a longer time within which to remove such property, if he continued to make weekly payments in advance, he made no such weekly payments. In either event the provisions of the agreement relating to the defendant's remedies became applicable before September 28, 1929.
removed therefrom, the defendant, on the facts found, did nothing, not contemplated by the agreement, either to prevent the plaintiff from removing his property from the building, or, in any other way, to exercise or claim dominion over such property. The facts found show no demand by the plaintiff for the property or for opportunity to remove it, and no refusal by the defendant. The principle that demand and refusal need not be shown to prove a conversion (see Lawyers Mortgage Investment Corp. of Boston v. Paramount Laundries Inc. 287 Mass. 357, 361) has no application where, as here, apart from demand and refusal, the detention of the property was not wrongful. See Fairbank v. Phelps, 22 Pick. 535, 539; Johnson v. Couillard, 4 Allen 446; Edmunds v. Hill, 133 Mass. 445, 446-447; Baker v. Lothrop, 155 Mass. 376, 378; DeYoung v. Frank A. Andrews Co. 214 Mass. 47; Hellier v. Achorn, 255 Mass. 273, 284-285. Furthermore, it does not appear that the removal of the property by the defendant from its premises was not within the scope of the agreement. No conversion is shown by the auditor's subsidiary findings.
It follows that the order allowing the defendant's motion for judgment -- in effect an order for judgment for the defendant -- must be affirmed.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.