Court Opinion

ID: 9587841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:27:04.150957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:56.124561
License: Public Domain

Candler, Justice,
dissenting. I dissent from the ruling made in Division 6 of the opinion and from the judgment of reversal. An Act which the legislature passed in 1959 (Ga. L. 1959, p. 143; Code Ann. § 5-9914) provides: “Any person, either on his own account or for others, who shall buy . . . cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, horses, mules, . . or other products or chattels, and shall fail or refuse to pay therefor or shall make way with or dispose of the same before he shall have paid therefor unless credit shall be expressly extended therefor, shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than five years.” The uncontradicted evidence in this case shows that the defendant, while acting for Smithfield Livestock Exchange, Inc., bought 201 hogs in Sumter County and gave the seller a check for $6,504.44 as the purchase price therefor — a check which he was authorized to and did sign for his principal; that the hogs were *335loaded on and hauled away in trucks belonging to his principal; and that the check he signed for his principal was turned down and not paid by the bank on which it .was drawn and presented because of insufficient funds in Smithfield’s account. These facts supported the finding that Coffee whs guilty of the offense charged against him and it was not necessary, as the majority has ruled, for the State to prove that Coffee in purchasing and disposing of the hogs intended to.defraud the seller. The penal offense which the Act creates and provides punishment for is committed when one purchases, either for himself or another, hogs or any of the other agricultural products or chattels mentioned in the Act and disposes of them before they are paid for unless credit shall be expressly extended. The majority ruling is contrary to the plain and unambiguous language of the Act and gives this court’s approval to conduct which the Act clearly penalizes.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Duckworth concurs in this dissent.