Davis v. Hamlin

Citations

• 108 Ill. 39
• 1883 Ill. LEXIS 52

Syllabus

<p>1. Agency—tbtjst—duty of agent in regard to principal and his business. In the employment of an agent the principal bargains for the disinterested skill, diligence and zeal of the agent for his own exclusive benefit. There rests upon one becoming agent the duty of fidelity to his employer's interest, and of acting for the furtherance and advancement of the business in which he engages, and not in its injury.</p> <p>2. Where a confidential agent of one having a lease of a theatre, who, from his position, was well acquainted with the profits of his principal in the use of the building, and who knew, some months before the old lease expired, that the latter was desirous of renewing his lease, offered privately to lease the theatre of the owner, proposing to give a larger rental than was reserved in the old lease, and denied to his principal that he was competing with him for the lease, but in fact did procure a lease to be made to himself, it was held, that the benefit of such lease a court of equity would hold to inure to his principal, and that the agent would be held to hold the same as a trustee for his principal.</p> <p>3. Courts of equity recognize a reasonable expectation of a tenant of a renewal of his lease as an interest of value, and hold that the act of an agent in the management of the lessee’s business, in interfering with and disappointing such expectation by procuring the lease to himself, is inconsistent with the fidelity which the agent owes to the business of his principal, and a court of equity will give the principal the benefit of the new lease.</p> <p>4. In applying this rule the nature of the relation is to be regarded, and not the designation of the one holding the relation. It is applied not only to persons standing in a direct fiduciary relation toward others, such as trustees, executors, attorneys and agents, but also to those who occupy any position out of which a similar duty ought, in equity and good conscience, to arise.</p> <p>5. The