Court Opinion

ID: 3863785
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 08:57:20.783766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:29.122041
License: Public Domain

This is an action on the case for conspiracy. The declaration charges in effect that the defendants and one Patrick Kenney, said Kenney being then a debtor of the plaintiffs, conspired together to prevent the plaintiffs and the other creditors of said Kenney from getting payment of their claims out of his property, and that, in pursuance of the conspiracy, Kenney made fictitious mortgages of his real and personal property to the defendants, under cover of which the defendants removed the personal property out of the possession of Kenney, and secreted it so that the plaintiffs were prevented from attaching it, and thus lost their claims. At the trial, after the plaintiffs had introduced their testimony in proof of the declaration, the court, on motion of the defendants, it having appeared that the plaintiffs were merely creditors at large of Kenney, without any interest in his property or lien upon it by attachment, levy, or otherwise, ruled that the action, in respect of the charges aforesaid, was not maintainable. The plaintiffs excepted to the ruling for error, and now petition for a new trial.
There is some conflict of authority on the question thus raised, but the more numerous and, we think, the better-reasoned and stronger cases are against the action. The principal ground of decision in these cases is that the damage, which is the gist of the action, is too remote, uncertain, and contingent, inasmuch as the *Page 336 
creditor has, not an assured right, but simply a chance of securing his claim by attachment or levy, which he may or may not succeed in improving. It is impossible to find any measure of damages for the loss of such a mere chance or possibility. Another ground, added in some of the cases, is that no action would lie in favor of such a creditor against the debtor for putting his property beyond the reach of legal process, if the debtor were to do it by himself alone, and that what would not be actionable if done by himself alone, cannot be actionable any the more when done by him with the assistance of others. The first of these grounds, which is the fundamental one and has been chiefly relied on, has been so exhaustively analyzed and discussed in the cases that it is impossible for us to add anything to the reasons adduced in support of it; and therefore, without reproducing them, we deem it sufficient simply to cite the cases themselves, all of which are accessible and can be readily consulted. Lamb
v. Stone, 11 Pick. 527; Wellington v. Small, 3 Cush. 145;Moody v. Burton, 27 Me. 427, 431; Adler v. Fenton, 24 How. U.S. 407; Austin v. Barrows, 41 Conn. 287, 296;Kimball v. Harman  Burch, 34 Md. 407, 410; Bradley v.Fuller, 118 Mass. 239. See also Bump on Fraudulent Conveyances, 505, 506; Cooley on Torts, 124, 586.
Petition dismissed.