Case Name: Dave Shapiro, Respondent, v. Jacob Lankay and Isaac Cohen, Appellants
Court: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Term
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1901-05
Citations: 35 Misc. 39
Docket Number: 
Parties: Dave Shapiro, Respondent, v. Jacob Lankay and Isaac Cohen, Appellants.
Judges: 
Reporter: New York Miscellaneous Reports
Volume: 35
Pages: 39–40

Head Matter:
Dave Shapiro, Respondent, v. Jacob Lankay and Isaac Cohen, Appellants.
(Supreme Court, Appellate Term,
May, 1901.)
Replevin — Failure to prove title —Judgment in, not supportable as one for a conversion.
The plaintiff cannot succeed in replevin unless he proves title to the specific property which he seeks to recover, and where he fails in this respect he cannot maintain his action by proving a claim for the value of the property, as such claim is in distinct repudiation of any continued claim to the property itself.
A judgment must be secundum allegata et probata and hence a judgment in replevin for the plaintiff cannot, by any tacit consent of the defendants, be supported as one for a conversion.
Appeal from a judgment of the Municipal Court of the city of Hew York, second district, borough of Manhattan, in an action tried by the court without a jury. Action to recover specific personal property, the defense being a general denial.
Charles C. Levenson, for appellants.
Meyer Greenberg, for respondent.

Opinion:
Bischoff, P. J.
The action was to recover specific personal property, a quantity of merchandise, possession of which was delivered to the defendants by Samuel Bernstein, Charles Bernstein and Isadore Bernstein, composing the firm of Gotham Hovelty Company, the former owners and the plaintiff's alleged assignors. The court below gave judgment for the plaintiff for the return of the property, or its value, if such return could not be had. In this view of the case, however, the recovery is exposed to successful challenge for failure of proof of the plaintiff's title to the property in suit.
Concededly, the Messrs. Bernstein were the owners of the property, and the plaintiff's claim of right to its recovery was predicated wholly of an alleged transfer thereof by such o-wners to Vn'm. A paper was offered and received in evidence, against the defendants' objection, which purported to " sell, assign, transfer and set over " to the plaintiff all the " right, title and inter est " of the Messrs. Bernstein " In and to a certain claim which they had against Jacob Lankay and Isaac L. Cohen, doing business under the firm name or style of J. Lankay and Company, of the City, County and State of New York, amounting to the sum of $144.79." That the claim alluded to in this paper had reference to the property in suit was left to the veriest conjecture. If, however, we regard the claim as one arising upon a sale or from the conversion of the property in suit, then, self-evidently, the plaintiff did not derive title to the property by means of the paper, since the assertion of a claim for the value of the property is in distinct repudiation of any continued claim to the property itself. No other evidence in attempted support of the plaintiff's claim of title was adduced.
If it is urged upon the record that the defendants had tacitly consented to the litigation of an issue other than that made by the pleadings (Frear v. Sweet, 118 N. Y. 454), to wit, conversion, and that, in that aspect, the paper alluded to was a sufficient investiture of the right to recover, it should be observed that the judgment is not secundum allegata et probata (Day v. New Lots, 107 N. Y. 148; Romeyn v. Sickles, 1 Silv. Ct. App. 594), it being consistent only with the former issue.
Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to the appellants to abide the event.
Leventritt and Clarke, JJ., concur.
Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to appellants to abide event.