Court Opinion

ID: 9789987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:44:57.058041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:25.277390
License: Public Domain

WADE, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. I think that a finding that defendant forged the name of Ann Troulis to the conditional sales contract, or that the contract was fictitious and there was no bona fide sale of the Buick car, would be unreasonable and not supported by the evidence.
*248Defendant testified to the following facts: She demonstrated the Buick car to Ann at her home on the evening of March 8, 1957, and Ann agreed to buy the car with the reservation that she could cancel the contract in a few days if she decided that the obligation of this car and a deep freeze she had already bought would be too much. Defendant did not have a form of a conditional sales contract with her, so Ann authorized her to prepare one when she returned to the office and sign her name to it and do what was necessary to arrange credit for the purchase of the Buick car. The car was left with Ann, but on March 13, 1957, after defendant had sold the contract but before she had cashed the check which she received therefor, Ann canceled the contract and defendant testified that she notified the Commercial Credit Corporation of such cancellation and was authorized to cash the check and send the money to them by check.
Defendant testified that she notified Mr. Green, the Unit Manager of the Commercial Credit Corporation, of the cancellation of the Troulis contract by telephone. Mr. Green admitted that he remembered the conversation and that defendant notified him of the cancellation of another contract which had been purchased from the V & H Motor Co. at the same time, and paid for by the same check as the Troulis contract, but testified that in that same conversation, “[S]he could have but I don’t remember that” she told me the Troulis contract had also been canceled.
On the preliminary hearing Ann denied that she bought this car or authorized defendant to sign her name to the contract. On the trial, however, Ann conceded that she may have authorized defendant to sign her name to the contract, and that the Buick car may have been left in her possession until after she canceled the contract, and that she may have authorized defendant to do whatever was necessary to arrange credit for such purchase. She testified that she had been “bulldozed” explaining that three representatives of the Commercial Credit Corporation visited her before the preliminary hearing, asking her to sign a statement which she refused, and one of them said, “Young lady, if you don’t sign you will end up paying for this car.” She further said that at the preliminary hearing she had testified, “No I didn’t give her permission to use my name,” because I “thought I would be mixed up in getting a car I didn’t know anything about and I just felt my only answer was to say ‘no’ because I was afraid and I had been threatened.”
At the trial she testified that she did not buy the Buick car. Apparently she merely meant that she did not complete the purchase, because she admitted that she may have authorized defendant to sign her name to the contract and leave the car in her possession and arrange to finance the sale but later canceled the contract to purchase.
*249If there was a bona fide contract by Ann Troulis to purchase this Buick car then no fraud was perpetrated. If the contract to purchase was valid when sold to the finance company, the fact that it was later canceled does not make the sale of the contract fraudulent. The State has the burden of eliminating all reasonable doubt of the material facts charged. One material fact charged was that there was no bona fide sale of the Buick car but that the contract to purchase it was fictitious. Since Ann Troulis, who purportedly made the contract, was not sure she had not authorized it, the State has failed to eliminate all reasonable doubt that the contract was invalid. So I think the case should be reversed with directions to dismiss the action.