Court Opinion

ID: 9527574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:31:38.007902+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:54.743820
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot subscribe to the holding that a partner, who is charged with having taken and misappropriated the funds belonging to the partnership of which he is a member, is not amenable to the penal statute, R.S. 14: 67.
It is well settled that a partnership, under our law, is a legal entity separate from the partners who compose it. As recently as last year, we were called upon to determine in Trappey v. Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Co., 229 La. 632, 86 So.2d 515, 516, whether a partner could become an employee of a partnership and entitled, as such, to compensation under our Workmen’s Compensation Act. It was argued there, just as here, that a partner could not be an employee, as he would occupy a dual status of employer and employee. This contentión was flatly rejected on the ground that the partnership, being a legal entity and “Under our.civil law system, unlike that of the common law, a partnership is an abstract ideal being with legal relations separate and distinct from those of its individual members; * * * ”, it not only had the capacity to employ one of its own members but that, when it did, the relationship of employer and employee came into existence.
Accordingly, since a partnership occupies a separate status as an ideal being, I see no good reason, and none is suggested by the majority opinion, why one of the partners cannot commit theft of its funds just because he happens to be one of the members composing the legal entity.
The conclusion reached in the majority opinion appears to be predicated on certain dicta contained in State v. Hogg, 126 La. 1053, 53 So. 225, 226, 29 L.R.A.,N.S., 830 and it is also observed by the majority that the pehal law (R.S. 14:67) does not apply in this case because the other partner may proceed civilly against the defendant for *947his alleged misappropriation of the partnership funds.
Insofar as the civil liability of one partner to the other is concerned, I find it difficult to perceive that this affords any basis for the conclusion that a criminal statute has or has not been violated.
And, it should be readily apparent that the cited dicta from State v. Hogg cannot be reconciled with the well-established jurisprudence to the contrary. In the Hogg case, wherein the defendant had been convicted of embezzlement, defense counsel had requested the judge to charge the jury that, if it found that the check (which was the subject of the theft) represented partnership funds belonging to defendant and Lizzie Hall, he would not be guilty. The judge refused this charge and, in considering on appeal whether error was committed in this respect, it was concluded that the ruling was correct because there was nothing in the record to indicate that any evidence was offered tending to show a partnership between defendant and Lizzie Hall. However, before reaching this result, the Court gratuitously engaged in a dissertation as to whether a partner could be guilty of embezzling the property of the firm of which he was a member and resolved that he could not because “ * * * he could not be the agent, clerk, or servant of such firm * * * This dicta, as I have pointed out, is in direct conflict with the ruling in the Trappey case.
I respectfully dissent.