Girard Trust Co. v. Harrington

Citations

• 23 Pa. Super. 615
• 1903 Pa. Super. LEXIS 130

Syllabus

<p>Payment — Mistake offaet — Attorney at law — Evidence—Witness.</p> <p>Money paid under a mistake of fact may be recovered. The fact that the pei’son making the payment has the means of knowledge at hand and overlooks the same by an inadvertence, is immaterial if the party receiving the same is not entitled to it.</p> <p>Where a trust company as trustee of an estate makes settlement with a distributee under a decree of the orphans’ court, and the attorney for the distributee is present at the settlement, makes no objection, and makes no demand for a fee out of the fund paid, and some months afterwards, in the absence of the officer of the trust company who had made the settlement, another official of the company who was ignorant of the settlement, pays over to the attorney a portion of the money which the distributee had left with the trust company as his agent, and such payment is made on the representation of the attorney that he was still the distributee’s counsel as to the fund, the trust company may, on the discovery of the mistake, recover back from the attorney the amount so paid. In such a suit the defendant is a competent witness after the death of the distributee.</p>