Sparks v. Hurley

Citations

• 208 Pa. 166
• 57 A. 364
• 1904 Pa. LEXIS 721

Syllabus

<p>Gift — Acceptance—Presumption—Husband and ivife — Conversion.</p> <p>A husband may make a valid gift to his wife by transferring an account from his name to hers, although she knows nothing of the transaction at the time, and does not then accept it. Her acceptance may be presumed.</p> <p>Where a husband transfers an account with a firm of stockbrokers from his own name to that of his wife, and the brokers make the transfer on their books, the wife may subsequently maintain an action against the brokers for trover and conversion, if they sell the securities in the account for a debt of the husband, without notice to her, or to the husband as her agent in managing the account.</p> <p>In an action by a wife against a firm of stockbrokers for the conversion of securities, there was evidence that the defendants in the regular course of their business permitted the husband to transfer an account standing in his own name to the name of his wife, and in lieu of the liability to him, there was substituted the liability to account to her, and that they accepted at the same time a good consideration in the shape of additional security; that they rendered statements of the account thereafter in her name, and received at a subsequent time additional margin and receipted for it in her name; that they subsequently sold the securities without her knowledge or consent, and without notice to her husband as her agent, and applied the proceeds to pay the debt of the husband. Held, that the case was for the jury, and that a verdict and judgment for plaintiff should be sustained.</p> <p>Mitchell, C. J., and Thompson J., dissent.</p>