Myers v. S. Feather Water Co.

Citations

• 10 Cal. 579

Syllabus

<p>Plaintiff made a written contract with the defendants to dig for them a certain lino of ditch for the conveyance of water, for which he was to be paid by the defendants in a certain specified manner. Plaintiff dug the ditch, and subsequently assigned and transferred his interest in the contract to L. & Co., to secure certain payments due from him to L. & Co., and authorized L. & Co. to receive from defendants payments from time to time, until the amount due them was liquidated, and L. & Co. gave defendants notice of such assignment, and defendants made several payments thereon. Plaintiff afterwards, and while L. & Co. yet held the assignment of the contract, and before their debt was paid off, demanded of defendants payment thereon, according to the stipulations of such contract, which was refused by defendants without assigning any reason therefor; whereupon plaintiff brought suit against defendants to recover the amount due on said contract: Held, that plaintiff, having transferred his interest in the contract to L. & Co., he had no right to make the demand, and that defendants had a right to refuse payment without assigning any reason therefor.</p> <p>The assignment of plaintiff to L. & Co., operating by its terms as a present and effectual change of ownership in the subject-matter, the title is supposed in law to remain divested until it be affirmatively shown that the condition of defeasance has happened. It is not unlike a chattel-mortgage, which conveys the thing mortgaged, with power to collect hires and to use the chattel until the money secured thereby is paid; and, until payment is proved, all the right of the mortgagor to the mortgaged property passes to the mortgagee.</p>