Court Opinion

ID: 9443604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:25:48.055711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:32.848795
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
PER CURIAM.
Appellant makes a number of contentions in its petition for rehearing. We make allusion to but two of them.
With respect to the unauthorized alterations of the assignments of the stock certificates, it is asserted that an alteration has no effect upon the rights of the parties to an instrument when made by one not a party thereto. The argument is that since the bank made the changes this was like an alteration by a mere interloper having no connection with any of the parties. The record shows that the bank was not handling the stock certificates and the assignments as a volunteer. Mrs. Price, with Burton, asserting that the transfer to Hurley Had been by mistake, obtained through Mr. Greenhouse the forms for transfer of the stock. She and Burton took the certificates to the bank and requested the bank to handle the certificates and transfer them with the assignments to the appellant. That the bank, while transacting this business for Price and Burton, undertook to cut corners, did not make it any the less their agent. Otis Elevator Co. v. First Nat. Bank, 163 Cal. 31, 124 P. 704, 41 L.R.A.,N.S., 529; Rutherford v. Rideout Bank, 11 Cal.2d 479, 80 P.2d 978, 117 A.L.R. 383. Cf. Restatement, Law of Agency, § 263. Its acts cannot be treated as those of a volunteer or an interloper. If, as is contended, the alterations made by the bank were later acquiesced in by Price and Burton, this might be some evidence of their ratification of the alterations, but it would not aid the position of the appellant.
It is also asserted that we failed .to give any consideration to appellant’s contention that the court should have found that when Mr. Price procured the original transfer of the 575 shares, his gift was subject to an express condition that the dividends on the stock were to belong to Mrs. Price as long as she lived. The trial court found to the contrary. In its Finding XVII the court said: “At all times mentioned above in Paragraph XI, plaintiff was the owner of an undivided one-third interest in the 575 shares of common stock described above in Paragraph III, and was entitled to receive one-third of all dividends and stock rights paid and delivered by defendant to Elizabeth J. Price, as stated above in Paragraph XII.”
For this finding there is ample support in the record, for although, as the findings show, Mr. Price informed Greenhouse that he expected to arrange for all dividends on the stock to be paid to Elizabeth J. Price during her lifetime, yet the testimony of Greenhouse shows that the parties under*267took to arrange for that result by having Burton and Price sign dividend orders, and that Greenhouse explained with great particularity that if the dividend orders were changed or later revoked, Mrs. Price wduld be “out of luck”. To this Price replied that he was not worrying about that or that the dividend orders would be changed. The significance of this is, we think, that it manifests that the parties contemplated that the transfer then being made was such that Hurley, by revoking his dividend order, could keep the dividends for himself. The record justifies the court’s finding that the transfer was a complete one, and not subject to the condition or reservation claimed by the appellant. Rehearing is denied.