Court Opinion

ID: 9678497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:21:21.437466+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:05.034716
License: Public Domain

Blair Moody, Jr., J.
I concur with the result reached by the opinion of the Court for the reason that there can be no conversion of money unless there is an obligation on the part of the defendant to deliver the identical money received for the intended purposes.
The essence of the dispute in the instant case was captured by Justice Voelker dissenting in People v Bayer, 352 Mich 564, 574; 90 NW2d 656 (1958), where he stated:
"That the testimony in this case may have richly *91shown that this defendant possessed 'a heart full of larceny’, as the saying goes, or that he may possibly have been guilty of some other offense, is no reason to sustain his conviction for this offense unless it is warranted by the record. On the other hand, that he may in the same transaction have possibly been guilty of one or more different criminal offenses as well as the one for which he was convicted is no reason to let him go.”
Defendant was convicted of three counts of larceny by conversion, MCL 750.362; MSA 28.594. It is claimed by the people that the heart of this case revolves about the issue of whether the defendant diverted money from the purpose for which it was delivered to him. The gravamen of the offense, as urged by the people, was the fact that Christenson appropriated funds to his own purposes to pay other obligations instead of applying them to certain avowed purposes.
This assertion overlooks the requirement that an action for conversion of money is not maintainable unless there is an obligation on the part of the defendant to return or apply the specific money entrusted to his care. Garras v Bekiares, 315 Mich 141; 23 NW2d 239 (1946); Globe & Rutgers Ins Co of New York v Fisher, 234 Mich 258; 207 NW 884 (1926); Alfred Shrimpton & Sons v Culver, 109 Mich 577; 67 NW 907 (1896).
This basic proposition was applied in the context of a criminal action for larceny by conversion in People v Bayer. The majority opinion in Bayer, as aptly quoted by this Court today, specifically prescribes that a prosecution for larceny by conversion of money will lie only where there is an obligation to keep intact or deliver the specific money in question and where such money can be identified. No such obligation was shown in this case. Reversed.