Roper v. Trustees of Sangamon Lodge No. 6

Citations

• 91 Ill. 518

Syllabus

<p>1. Fraud—by failure to give information. There is no fraud in failing to give information to another of a fact of which he is ignorant, when the information is as accessible to one person as to the other. One person is not required to act as the agent of another when the latter, by reasonable diligence, may acquire the information necessary to protect himself.</p> <p>2. Same—by payee in neglecting to inform, surety. If a person, knowing another to be utterly insolvent, proposes to credit him if he will procure sureties, he can not be held guilty of a fraud by failing to apprise the surety of the insolvency of his principal; but if the person giving the credit makes use of any artifice to throw the surety off his guard and lull him into a false security, and he is thereby deceived, this will amount to a fraud.</p> <p>3. Where a party becomes surety upon the bond of a treasurer of a secret society, for the faithful application of moneys in his hands, payable to the society, the fact that the officers and members of the society knew of his previous mis-appropriations of the funds entrusted to him during the prior year, and with such knowledge re-elected him, and failed to communicate such fact to his sureties, no inquiry being made of them by the sureties, and they doing no act to put the sureties off their guard or preventing them from ascertaining the facts, no fraud can be imputed to the society which can be set up in avoidance of the sureties’ liability on the bond.</p> <p>4. Surety—'when can not show defalcation of officer occurred in previous term. Where an officer is re-elected and becomes his own successor, and at the commencement of his second term reports a certain sum in his hands, and gives bond with sureties to account for and pay over the moneys coming to his hands during the term, his sureties, when sued, will be responsible for the sum so reported in his hands, and will not be allowed to show that the defalcation, in fact, occurred during the previou