Campbell v. Beaman

Citations

• 68 Pa. Super. 30
• 1917 Pa. Super. LEXIS 65

Syllabus

<p>Corporations — Failure to record charter — Liability of incorporators — Sale of lots — Gambling contract — Statute of limitations.</p> <p>Where a number of persons are granted a charter for a real estate company, and the company purchases land subject to a mortgage, and after having divided the land into lots and sold the lots to different purchasers under agreements to pay the purchase-money on installments, suffers the mortgage to be foreclosed, and loses the title, the incorporators may be held personally liable for the installments paid, if it appears that they failed to record the charter of the company in the proper county until seven years after the date of the charter. The statute of limitations begins to run^ in favor of the defendants only from the date of the recording of * the charter.</p> <p>In such a case a corporation, which had been one of the original incorporators, but not included as a defendant when the suit was brought because of plaintiff’s ignorance of the circumstances, may be brought in as a party defendant by amendment with leave of the court.</p> <p>An agreement will not be construed a gambling contract where a real estate company which has sold lots to various purchasers, on installment payments, agrees that the location of the different lots shall be designated at a meeting of the purchasers after sixty per cent, of the purchase-money of all lots had been paid, at which time the company agreed to distribute the sum of ten thousand dollars in various amounts, according to a schedule attached to the agreement, in which the lots were designated by numbers with the amount which each was to receive in the drawing. Where the company permits a mortgage to be foreclosed and loses its title to the land, and the purchasers bring suits to recover the installments of the purchase-money which they had paid, the company cannot allege as a defense that the contract was of a gambling character.</p>