Court Opinion

ID: 9443491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:22:23.700763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:30.405765
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge.
I concur in the foregoing opinion. I think appellant cannot sustain his claim of a right arising out of a resulting trust for additional reasons. It is claimed that NYK furnished or provided the consideration out of which the bank account involved arose. It seems to me that at most NYK furnished only a part of the consideration. Assuming that it provided the $39,000 with which the Yoshio Muto account was opened and that it furnished the vessel, yet there would have been no trip and no fund were it not that the Japanese Government, as its part of the consideration, furnished its facilities and status as a sovereign power. There is no way in which what NYK furnished could be weighed or measured against what the Japanese Government furnished.
Under these. circumstances the court would be obliged to adopt the rule that where the consideration is furnished both by the alleged trustee and the claimed beneficiary in respective amounts which are uncertain and unknown even to the parties, and where the allocation of the consideration is left to mere conjecture, a resulting trust does not arise. I assume the California law controls and the rule in such cases is stated in Plass v. Plass, 122 Cal. 3, 14, 54 P. 372. The idea behind a resulting trust is that the parties must have intended that he who furnished the consideration was not making a gift or donation or extending a loan to the person into whose hands the transfer came. Tryon v. Huntoon, 67 Cal. 325, 327, 7 P. 741. Cf. Bogert on Trusts and Trustees, § 454, note 37. But the presumption is one which may be rebutted by evidence of the circumstances showing a different intention. Tryon v. Huntoon, supra. Typical cases are those where the relationship of the parties is out of the ordinary, as for instance, where there are ties of affection, Tryon v. Huntoon, supra, or relationships of husband and wife, Hamilton v. Hubbard, 134 Cal. 603, 65 P. *257321, 66 P. 860, or parent and child, Daniel v. Sisnero, 109 Cal.App. 8, 292 P. 518.
Here the relationship between NYK and its sovereign, the Japanese Government, was quite extraordinary. I think the court would not be obliged to presume that NYK was not advancing the funds and furnishing the ship under circumstances excluding an expectation of a beneficial interest in the funds -here in controversy.