Goldsmith v. Baldwin

Headnote

Equity — cancellation — action to set aside and have declared null a mortgage on property owned by a corporation, transferred by it to its treasurer and after execution by him of mortgage to secure a personal indebtedness retransferred to corporation.

Goldsmith v. Baldwin, 194 App. Div. 966 ; affirmed.

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered January 6, 1921, affirming a judgment in favor of defendants entered upon a dismissal of the complaint by the court on trial at Special Term.

The action was to have set aside and declared null a mortgage executed by defendant Bradley to defendant trustees. The complaint alleged that the defendant Fiss, Doerr & Carroll Horse Company owned prior to December, 1916, a certain apartment building, No. 310 West Eighty-sixth street, New York city; that on and prior to December 1, 1916, William Bradley was the treasurer and a director of the horse company, and was personally indebted to defendant trustees in the sum of $100,000, growing out of the purchase by Bradley from defendant trustees of certain stock of the horse company; that defendant trustees had, prior to December 1, 1916, demanded of Bradley that he either pay this sum or give security therefor; that shortly prior to December 1, 1916, it was agreed that Bradley should give defendant trustees a $100,000 mortgage on the Eighty-sixth street property, and that afterwards defendant trustees learned that title to the property stood in the name of the horse company; that thereafter the horse company transferred the property to Bradley without any consideration; that Bradley mortgaged the property to defendant trustees in the sum of $100,000, subject to existing mortgages, and that Bradley retransferred the property to the horse company March 17, 1917.