Case Name: Jacob Klee et al., App'lts, v. Hugh J. Grant, Sheriff, Resp't
Court: New York Court of Common Pleas
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1893-06-05
Citations: 53 N.Y. St. Rep. 77
Docket Number: 
Parties: Jacob Klee et al., App’lts, v. Hugh J. Grant, Sheriff, Resp’t.
Judges: 
Reporter: New York State Reporter
Volume: 53
Pages: 77–84

Head Matter:
Jacob Klee et al., App’lts, v. Hugh J. Grant, Sheriff, Resp’t.
(New York Common Pleas, General Term,
Filed June 5, 1893.)
1. Replevin—Owner op goods attached while in possession op another
MAY MAINTAIN.
Where goods of one in the possession of another are taken on attachment, the right of the owner to the possession of the goods as against that owner is such a right to reduce into possession under § 1690 of the Code as will sustain replevin against the sheriff.
52. Same—Goods delivered por examination.
Goods delivered to one for examination with an option to buy may be retaken by the owner before exercise of the option by the proposed buyer.
3. Same.
A seizure by the sheriff before such exercise of option subjects him to an action of replevin at suit of the owner of the goods.
(Bookstaver, J., dissents.)
Appeal from judgment of the general term of the city court, affirming judgment on dismissal of the complaint.
Action of claim and delivery.
Sampler & Bloomfield (Samuel Fleischman, of counsel), for app’lts; Cochran & Clark (Abraham Gruber, of counsel), for resp’t.
Reversing 43 St. Rep., 791; 51 id., 117.

Opinion:
Pryor, J.
The case is before us upon a reargument, and on review of our former decision we are of opinion that it is erroneous.
The plaintiffs bring replevin against the sheriff for certain chattels of which they claim to be owners and entitled to the possession. The defendant justifies under a writ of attachment against Rothschild upon the ground that the goods were his property.
On the conclusion of the plaintiffs' proof the complaint was dismissed, and we are to determine whether as the case stood it presented an apparent right of recovery.
Indisputably, the evidence authorized the inference that the -goods were the property of the plaintiffs, and were wrongfully taken by the defendant. E. S. T. F. Co. v. Grant, 114 N. Y., 40, 43 ; 22 St. Rep., 302. But the contention is that at the time of the seizure the plaintiffs had no right to " reduce them into possession;" and so were barred of recovery by sub-division 3 of § 1690 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
As the complaint was dismissed against the objection of the plaintiffs, they are entitled, on review of the judgment, to the most favorable consideration of the evidence ; and the precise question for adjudication is, whether upon the proof, with all the inferences of which it was susceptible in support of the plaintiffs' case, they had a right, at the time of the seizure by the defendant, to reduce the goods to possession? That they had such right is an inevitable conclusion.
Having shown that the goods were their property, the plaintiffs proceeded to disclose how and upon what conditions they came into the custody of Rothschild: " A gentleman, representing himself as the buyer or clerk of M. Rothschild, doing business on White street, came to our store and requested permission to look at our line of goods, with view of making arrangements to do some business with us; this man requested to be allowed to select a certain style of goods, and wanted to- know the qualities and price; he did so select goods, and wished me to send down to their store a memorandum of them to compare them with other goods which, he said, he was getting from other houses, and that if he found he could use them he would buy them, and buy such quantities as I had or could sell him ; so we sent them down, one garment of every lot; with the price marked opposite."
That the goods were delivered to Rothschild for examination only, and not upon any contract of purchase, is clear beyond the possibility of mistake. He was to buy them only in the event that he found he could use them. In the possession of Rothschild upon an offer of sale by the plaintiffs, the goods remained their property; and as the offer had not been accepted, the plaintiffs had a right to reclaim them. Quick v. Wheeler, 78 N. Y., 300, 304; Pollock on Contracts, 8; 2 Benjamin on Sales, § 911; Hunt v. Wyman, 100 Mass., 198. If a demand were requisite to convert the lawful possession of Rothschild into a wrongful detention, nevertheless the plaintiffs had a right to reduce the goods into-their possession. They had a right to revoke their offer of sale, and a demand would have effected such revocation; they had a right to make the demand; after that demand Rothschild would hold by wrong, and they might, by their own act, take the goods from his possession. Spencer v. McGowen, 13 Wend., 256; Dun-ham v. Wyckoff, 3 id., 280.
When nothing is requisite to one's rightful possession but acts he may rightfully do, he certainly has a right to reduce to possession. If nought but a demand be necessary to the right of possession, the right to make the demand is a right to reduce to possession. " To reduce to possession is to change a right existing as an actionable claim into actual custody and enjoyment." Anderson's Law Diet., 792.
The argument is sufficiently supported by authority. In Payne v. Batterson, 22 W. Dig., 109, an engine was sold on the condition that the note given for the purchase price might be declared due before maturity, and the engine retaken by the seller. While-in the possession of the buyer, the engine was seized on an execution against his property. Here plainly an exercise and declaration of the seller's election to rescind was a condition precedent to his right of possession. In Wise v. Grant, 20 N. Y. Supp., 828 ; 49 St Rep., 439, goods obtained by fraud were taken from the buyer by the sheriff; and the court ruled that, at the time of seizure, the seller had a right to reduce them to possession, saying per Lawrence, J.: " It was undoubtedly the right of the plaintiffs,, if the sale was induced by fraud on the part of the vendee, to rescind the sale and reclaim the goods. This the plaintiffs have sought to do; but it is claimed that they could not maintain the action because at the time of the seizure of the property they did not have the right to reduce it into their possession. We do not see how this contention can be successfully supported." And yet an exercise of the option to rescind was an act still to be done before the right of possession could accrue. In Willis v. O'Brien, 3 J. & S., 536, by the terms of a chattel mortgage the goods were to remain in the possession of the mortgagor until default in payment. After such default, upon execution against the mortgagor, the sheriff seized the goods in his possession, and, held, that the mortgagee might maintain replevin against the sheriff.
The argument of the respondent assumes that the statutory phrase, "a right to rei'nce to possession," is the equivalent, in legal effect, of a right to in mediate possession. The assumption is purely gratuitous. The n^ht of immediate possession is a familiar formula in the law: ai,1 had the legislature contemplated that right, it would have so &. id; but instead it employs, ex industria, an expression of an essentially different signification. The right of immediate possession implies a right already perfect and effectual, to the consummation of which no other act, as a demand, is requisite.
On the contrary, a right to reduce to possession imports ex vi termini a right to the completeness and operative force of which something else is still indispensable. A right of immediate possession and a right to reduce to possession are obviously not identical propositions. We are to conclude, therefore, that by the application of the different term the legislature intended a different idea.
It may be conceded that a right to reduce to possession is equipollent with a right of possession. But a right to possession may exist and yet something be needed, as a demand, to put the right in form for enforcement by action. The case before us is an apt illustration. Owners of the goods, and with no adverse title or interest in Bothschild, their bailee, the plaintiffs had, indisputably, a right to the possession of the goods, notwithstanding that before they could realize the right by action against him a demand upon him was indispensable.
Just here the fallacy of the respondent's argument is apparent. He assumes that in order to replevin against the sheriff the plaintiffs should have had, at the time of the seizure, a right of replevin against Bothschild. But such is not the language of the Code. The only condition it imposes is, that at the time of the seizure the plaintiffs should have the right of possession against Bothschild; and since, by his levy, the sheriff succeeded only to Bothschild's bare possession, the demand made upon the defendant consummated plaintiffs' cause of action in replevin.
As against plaintiffs' plenary property in the goods, by what right could Bothschild pretend to retain them ? Since by none$ then plaintiffs' right to the possession is plain and incontestable.
The fundamental infirmity in respondent's position is that he confounds the right of possession with the right to maintain replevin, and supposes that because a demand may be necessary to the latter, it is to the former. Undoubtedly a right to possession is an indispensable condition of replevin ; but a general right of possession may exist, and yet something more, a demand for instance, be requisite to sustain the action of replevin. As between the owner of a horse and him to whom it is lent, the borrower has the actual possession and the owner the right of possession ; and while a demand is necessary to reclaim the horse by replevin, it is not a constituent of the right of possession. The demand is indispensable to convert the lawful possession into a tortious detainer ; but without such demand, the right of possession still resides in the owner of a chattel of which another has possession upon a naked bailment.
Perceiving, in the case at bar, that the plaintiffs might not maintain replevin against Rothschild without a previous demand, the respondent assumes that such demand was requisite to plaintiffs' right of possession; but this right subsisted in plaintiffs' absolute ownership of the goods, and the absence of any right in Rothschild to their detention against the owners. .
That the plaintiffs' right of possession suffices to sustain the action, a review of adjudged cases leaves no room for doubt. In Clark v. Skinner, 20 Johns., 465, 470, it is stated as a general rule, that a plaintiff in replevin must have " either the actual possession, or the right of reducing to his actual possession, at the time of the tortious taking." In Marshall v. Davis, 1 Wend., 110,112, 113, it was held that the plaintiff must have " either actual possession, or constructive possession, by which is meant the right to reduce the article to possession at his pleasure; " and that if goods be taken from a bailee the owner has such right to reduce to possession, as against the wrongdoer. In Dunham v. Wyckoff, 3 Wend., 280, 281, the decision was that " a person having the property in goods, and having the right to reduce them to actual possession, may bring replevin against an officer who takes them by virtue of .an execution out of the possession of the defendant in the execution," the reason being, that " the plaintiff having the property in the goods, had the constructive possession ; for the property draws to it the possession; the plaintiff, therefore, has the right to take possession at pleasure, and could have sustained trespass; and trespass and replevin in such cases are concurrent remedies." In other words, a right to take possession at pleasure is a right of ' possession; and such right the owner has against a naked bailee ; i. e., one who holds possession only by his license and permission. Equally in point is Spencer v. McGowen, 13 Wend., 256 ; where, held, that " the owner of personal property left in the possession of a third person may, by his own act, repossess himself of such property, although it be taken from the possession of such third person by virtue of a writ of replevin."
That in the present instance the plaintiffs had a right to reduce the goods to possession at the time of their seizure by the defendant will be all the more manifest when we consider the cases in which it is held that the owner had not the right of possession. For example, observe the ratio decidendi in Savall v. Wauful, 21 Civ Pro., 18. There the plaintiff sold a pair of horses to Austin for $250, $50,to be paid down, and the balance by equal instalments in three, six, nine and twelve months. Austin was to have possession of the horses, but the title was to remain in the plaintiff until complete payment On delivery of possession Austin made the cash payment of $50, and gave four notes for $50, each payable in three, six, nine and twelve months. Then the sheriff seized the horses on execution against Austin; and in replevin by the owner, it was ruled that he had not the right to reduce them to possession. And why? Because, "at the time the sheriff made the levy, Austin, the defendant in execution, had the actual possession of the horses, and the right to retain the same until there was a default in the payment of some part of the purchase money. The defendant in the execution, Austin, the vendee, had an interest in the property which was the subject of a levy and sale upon an execution against him; hence, the plaintiff, at the time he commenced the action, had neither the possession nor the right to the possession of the horses, and could not, therefore, maintain replevin."
In the case at bar, on the contrary, Rothschild", before a purchase of the goods, had no interest in them subject to levy on execution against him; nor a right to retain possession of them -against plaintiffs, the owners. He did not hold them as vendee subject to a condition of defeasance, but merely for examination with the privilege of buying them on a contingency that never occurred. In the language of the law, his possession was a naked bailment; and so while he had the actual possession, the right of possession remained in the owners, who might, at any moment, reduce them into possession. By the levy the sheriff got -only the right of Rothschild, actual possession subject to the right of possession in the owner. Hersey v. Benedict, 15 Hun, 282,285.
Reason and authority alike dictate the rule of decision to be: that in replevin by the owner against a sheriff for a seizure of goods in the custody of another against whom the process runs, the defendant stands upon the right of possession in that other; if that other has a right of possession against the owner, the action may not be maintained; but if he has not a right of possession against the owner, the action is well brought
To the argument that by denying to plaintiffs the right to recover the goods themselves they suffer no injury, because an action lies against the sheriff for conversion, Platt, J., retorts a triumphant answer in Clark v. Skinner, supra.
The conclusion is that, at the time of the seizure of the goods in controversy by the defendant, the plaintiffs had the right to reduce them into possession; and that so the action is unimpeachable.
Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, costs to abide the event
Bischoff, J., concurs.