Case Name: Bawn versus Keller
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1862
Citations: 3 Grant 144
Docket Number: 
Parties: Bawn versus Keller.
Judges: 
Reporter: Reports of cases argued and adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Grant)
Volume: 3
Pages: 144–145

Head Matter:
Bawn versus Keller.
Concurrent possession of personal property By the vendor and vendee will not protect the property from tBie creditors of the vendor.
Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Clinton County.

Opinion:
The following opinion was delivered by
Steqng, J.
In this State, ever since the case of Clow v. Woods, 5 Serg. & Rawle, 245, it has been held that a voluntary sale of personal property, unaccompanied by an actual delivery of the possession to the vendee, is fraudulent and void as against creditors. This was the doctrine df Edwards v. Harben, 2 Term, 587, and it is too well founded in reason ever to be shaken. The delivery which the law requires must be actual. A symbolical or a merely formal delivery will not answer. Babb v. Clemson, 10 S. & R. 419. Concurrent'possession by the vendor and vendee is insufficient to protect the property against the creditors of the vendors. Eetention of the possession not only tends to • give credit to the seller, but it is a sign of a secret trust in his favor. Such being the law, the plaintiff in this record had no case. It would have been error to submit to the jury to find whether there had not been a delivery of the property alleged to have been' bought by him, for there was no evidence of any such change of the possession as. is indispensable. The parties to the sale were brothers-in-law, living in the same house. Before the sale, the horses and carriages were kept in a stable on the lot where both parties lived,-and they remained there until levied upon by the creditors of Hawkins. After the sale, they were used by Hawkins as before, and attended to by him. He bought hay for the horses, and offered to sell them, with the permission of the vendee, and continued to exercise over them every conceivable act of ownership. His own testimony is, that it was part 6f the arrangement he should take care of the horses and sell them if he could. In the face of these facts, a finding by a jury that there had been a real delivery would have been more than a finding-without evidence; it would have been against evidence. The case is not better for the plaintiff in error, because he and Hawkins lived together on the lot where the stable was. That fact could not dispense with an actual change of the possession. In Hoover v. Clark, 5 Whart. 545, we have a case very similar to this. There the vendor and vendee were brothers, living in the same house, and it was held that it furnished no ground for dispensing with such an actual change of the possession as will render it distinct and visible, so that it may become notorious. Nor is the rule different as laid down in Mc Vicar v. May, 3 Barr, 224. In that case there was an actual taking possession by the vendee, and a removal of the property. So there was no actual delivery in Dunlop v. Bournonville, 2 Casey, 72.
.The judgment is affirmed.