Court Opinion

ID: 9832649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:05:02.176118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:49.903363
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
In his motion for rehearing, appellee says: “The promise to issue the stock is not the basis of appellee’s cause of action. The basis of it is the failure to issue the stock paid for and in reality it would have not teen necessary for the appellee to have alleged this additional promise." (Italics ours.) Upon this view the duty sought to be enforced by the suit is one imposed by law and not by contract. It would be a tort. Such a theory of recovery would be that one who had subscribed to the capital stock of a corporation and had paid only a part of same could, without offering to pay the balance due, make demand for the issue of stock to him in the amount that his partial payment would equal, and then put the corporation in default if it refused to do so. We think clearly the law imposes no such duty on the corporation, and therefore gives no such right to a subscriber to stock. It would be wholly inconsistent with the right of the corporation to forfeit stock subscriptions for failure to pay the unpaid part of the subscription price.
If such was the theory upon which judgment was sought, what damages could be said to have been foreseeable as the direct and proximate result of failure to perform the alleged duty? In this inquiry it is important to keep in inind that it was not a refusal to issue the stock, such as to constitute a conversion, that was charged, but delay in issuing the ■stock. What fact was alleged to show, or charge appellant with notice, that a mere delay in issuing the stock would result in injury to appellee? In the first place, if the duty was one imposed by law, no reason was alleged to show why it was necessary that the stock be issued in order to enable appellee to make a sale of same. It appears he bought it without it having been issued. If there were any special facts showing that he could not make a sale of it until it was issued, it was necessary that such facts be alleged. In the second place, no fact was alleged to show that appellant knew or should have known that, while delaying the issuing of the stock, appellee contemplated a sale of the stock, or had an opportunity to sell same at the higher price.
That the damages received were not such as necessarily resulted from the delay in issuing the stock is apparent when we consider that there would have been none if a sale could have been made just as well without the stock being issued, or if the market value of the stock had increased.
But, regardless of appellee’s contention noted above, wé construe the pleading as attempting to state a cause of action based upon a contract with the subscribers to the capital stock to issue to them or their assigns stock equal to the payments made on the subscriptions.
The pleading did not allege the existence of such a contract. It alleged an agreement. A mere agreement does not import a legal obligation. There must be a consideration to make it such. No consideration was *882alleged. Eor that reason, as well as the others discussed in the original opinion, we overrule the motion for rehearing.
HICKMAN, C. J., disqualified and not sitting.