Larkin v. Pennsylvania Railroad

Headnote

Conversion — literary property — action to recover for alleged appropriation by defendants of plans prepared by plaintiff for the improvement of their property.

Larkin v. Penn. R. R. Co., 216 App. Div. 832 , affirmed.

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department, entered June 10, 1926, unanimously affirming a ju igment in favor of defendants entered upon an order of Special Term granting a motion by defendants for judgment on the pleadings. The complaint alleged that the defendants respectively were interested in or owned the land upon which the Pennsylvania Hotel now stands; that beneath part of the land are the tunnels and tracks of railroads; that the defendants desired to erect thereon a. hotel structure; that they informed the plaintiff that their engineer had said this would be impracticable to a height of more than twelve stories; that the plaintiff was interested with associates in securing the contract to construct this hotel; that he prepared plans for the construction of a twenty-five-story hotel building and plans for- the construction of a thirty-one-story hotel building; that he delivered these plans to the defendants in furtherance of the negotiations by which he and his associates hoped to secure the contract, and that the defendants used his foundation plans and did not award him the contract. Damages were demanded for the alleged appropriation of plaintiff’s literary property, by which he claimed the defendants were unjustly enriched.