Case Name: Ezra Hyde versus Thomas Cross, Trustee of Patten and Waterman
Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Decision Date: 1808-05
Citations: 3 Tyng 404
Docket Number: 
Parties: * Ezra Hyde versus Thomas Cross, Trustee of Patten and Waterman.
Judges: 
Reporter: Massachusetts Reports
Volume: 4
Pages: 353–354

Head Matter:
* Ezra Hyde versus Thomas Cross, Trustee of Patten and Waterman.
Chattels are conveyed by a debtor to his creditor with authority to sell them for cash if the debt was not paid at a stipulated time • he sells them for promissory notes payable at a future day, and sells the notes for cash, at a discount He shall account only for the cash actually received by him.
This was a scire facias to show cause wherefore the plaintiff should not have execution against Cross, as for his own proper debt, to satisfy the judgment recovered by the plaintiff in the original suit against the principal debtors.
From the disclosure of Cross upon the scire facias, he not having submitted to an examination in the original action, it appeared that Patten and Waterman, being his debtors for certain supplies furnished by him for their ship Orion, had made to him a bill of sale of the ship, with authority to sell the same for cash, if his debt was not paid at a stipulated time ; and that he had afterwards, and since the service of the original writ in this case upon him, sold the said ship for the benefit of said Patten and Waterman, for promissory notes, payable in sixty and ninety days, which notes he also sold at a discount of one and a half per cent, per month, the said discount amounting, on the whole of said notes, to the sum of 213 dollars 25 cents, and that, after deducting the debt due to him for the articles aforesaid, and also a commission or brokerage of one per cent, on the sale of said ship, a balance of 575 dollars and 97 cents remained in his hands subject to the order of law.
The question for the decision of the Court, which was submitted without argument, was whether Cross had authority to sell the said notes at a discount, in the manner disclosed by him, after he had been summoned as trustee in this case, and whether he should now be adjudged the trustee of Patten and Waterman for the amount of that discount in addition to the balance acknowledged by him, or for the amount of that balance only.
E. Whitman for the plaintiff.
Pope for the defendant.

Opinion:
By the Court.
Let judgment be entered for the sum of 575 dollars 97 cents.