Opinion
Decided June, 1885.
A sale of goods is not rendered void by the want of a change of possession as against a creditor who has knowledge of the sale, and assents and becomes a party to it by deriving from it a valuable security.
TROVER, for machinery and other property attached in a mill, by the plaintiff, a deputy sheriff, as the property of Beck Mitchell, who had sold it to the defendants. The attaching creditors, who are the plaintiffs in interest, claim there was not a sufficient change of possession. A verdict was ordered for the defendants.
Worcester Gafney, for the plaintiff.
E. A. Hibbard and J. H. Hobbs, for the defendants.
The plaintiffs in interest had been employed by the vendors as workmen in the mill. Having knowledge of the sale, and being informed by the vendees that they took possession and would run the mill, they continued their work, upon the faith of the vendees' promise to be responsible for future wages, and to pay wages previously earned if there should be a profit. They had the benefit of all the notice any change of possession could have given, and were so far parties to the sale as to have no cause to complain of any want of completeness in the change of possession. There was no need of a more thorough change to inform them of a contract of which they had all the knowledge they could desire, and to which they assented by deriving from it a valuable security. Coburn v. Pickering, 3 N.H. 415, 426.
Judgment on the verdict.
ALLEN, J., did not sit: the others concurred.