Ingram v Little
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE SELLERS,LORD JUSTICE PEARCE |
| Judgment Date | 27 July 1960 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1960] EWCA Civ J0727-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Date | 27 July 1960 |
[1960] EWCA Civ J0727-2
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
Lord Justice Sellers
Lord Justice Pearce and
Lord Justice Devlin
Mr. STEPHEN CHAPMAN, Q.C and Mr. R. R. HOPKINS (Instructed by Messrs. Pressman & Redman) appeared for the Respondent, Defendant below.
Mr. INGRAM POOLE (Instructed by Messrs, Gibson & Weldon, Agents for Gale, Greenwood & Co., Poole) appeared on behalf of the Respondents, Plaintiffs below.
: In August 1957 the plaintiffs were the joint owners of a Renault Dauphine Motor Car ULJ.101.
On the 3rd August, the Saturday before the August Bank holiday of that year, in a transaction with a man not inappropriately called 'the rogue Hutchinson' by the learned Judge, the plaintiffs parted with the car to him. By the 6th August the car was in Blackpool and there was a purported sale of it to the defendant by the rogue (as the Judge found) then using the name Hardy.
If the property in the car had passed on the 3rd August to 'the rogue Hutchinson', whatever his true name and identity was, then the defendant would have got a good title on the Judge's findings that Hutchinson and Hardy were but one person 'the rogue Hutchinson' and that the defendant through his servants bought the car in good faith and without notice of the Seller's defect in title.
Mr. Justice Slade held that no contract had in fact been entered into between the plaintiffs and 'Hutchinson' and that no title had passed to him and therefore none was transferred to the defendant and he gave judgment for the plaintiffs for £720 the agreed value of the car, as damages for conversion.
The defendant has appealed against this decision alleging that the learned Judge was wrong both in law and in fact in so holding and it will be necessary to examine the facts found as well as the law applied.
By a cross notice of appeal the Respondents have challenged the findings that the man who sold the car to the defendant was the same man who had obtained it from them and that the defendant bought the car in good faith. It was submitted to us, that the findings were unjustified but I agree so fully with what the learned Judge has said and held on both these matters that I do not review the evidence or the argument afresh on the respondents' contentions. The defendant and his servants like so many who buy and sell secondhand motor cars, might have been more astute and more careful but it requires more than that to justify a finding of bad faith. The inference that there had been no transaction with the car intervening between that with the plaintiffs and that with the defendants seems reasonable and probable and therefore sufficiently established as the Judge has held.
The decision in this case turns solely on whether 'Hutchinson' entered into a Contract which gave him a title to the car which would subsist until it was avoided on the undoubted fraud being discovered.
There was no evidence from the other alleged contracting party 'Hutchinson', the alleged buyer, for he is apparently unknown and untraced but the learned Judge found the plaintiffs evidence satisfactory and reliable and the judgment sufficiently and accurately makes these findings:
About 2.15 p.m. the rogue Hutchinson called at the house where the two Misses Ingram and Miss Badger were living. He was, I think, actually admitted by Miss Hilda Ingram. He told her he was Hutchinson, and Miss Hilda Ingram accordingly introduced him to her sister Miss Elsie Ingram as Hutchinson. He looked at the car, and asked Miss Elsie Ingram to take him for a run in it, and she did so. During the ran he was very talkative. He told Miss Elsie Ingram that he came from Surrey. He talked about his family, who he said were then In Cornwall, and he said that his home was at Caterham. At that time he had given no further information, nor, I believe, had he even given his initials; he was merely Mr. Hutchinson.
After the drive they came back to the house and dismissed the sale of the car. As I have said, the asking price in the advertisement was £725 or near offer. Hutchinson offered Miss Elsie Ingram £700, and she refused. He then offered £717. Miss Ingram was prepared to accept £717 in cash, and I need hardly say that the price of anything which is sold is a price in cash unless anything else is said to the contrary. At that moment the rogue Hutchinson pulled out a cheque book and Miss Elsie Ingram immediately realised that he was proposing to pay the £717 by cheque. She told him that she would not in any circumstances accept a cheque, and that she was only willing to sell the car for cash. She told him that so far as she was concerned the proposed deal was finished. She said she was not prepared to accept a cheque. She had expected cash, and she made as though to walk out of the room.
The rogue Hutchinson started to talk and try to convince her that he was a most reputable person, and then for the first time he gave his initials. He said he was a Mr. P. G.M. Hutchinson. He said he had business interests in Guildford, and that he lived at Stanstead House, Stanstead Road, Caterham. At that moment Miss Hilda Ingram, who had been in the room, slipped out of the room and after a short time she returned.
I pause there for a moment to say what she had done while she was out of the room. She in fact went to the Park stone Post Office, which was only about two minutes from their house, and she had looked in the main Directory covering the district of Caterham. In that Directory she saw the entry, 'Hutchingsons, P.G.M., Stanstead House, Stanstead "Road, Caterham 4665", and she believed that that was the man who at that moment was with her sister in their house.
Miss Hilda Ingram returned to the house and to the room where Miss Elsie Ingram was still discussing the propose, sale, and Miss Hilda told Miss Alice that she had checked with the telephone directory at the Lower Park stone Post Office, and that there was such a person as Mr. P.G.M, Hutchinson Caterham, living at that address, that is to say, Stanstead House, Stanstead Road. Having received that information she and Miss Hilda decided that they would let the rogue Hutchinson have the car in exchange for the cheque. She said that she did so because they believed that he was the "person he said he was."
It was clearly proved that "Hutchinson" was not Mr. P.G.M. Hutchinson of Stanstead House, Stanstead Road, Caterham who had nothing whatever to do with the transaction in question and knew none of the parties connected with it. This gentle-man banked with a branch of Lloyds Bank in London. It appears that the rogue "Hutchinson" opened an account on the 2nd August 1957 at a branch of the Westminster Bank in Guildford with a deposit of £10, acquired a cheque book from which he drew cheques on this account to the extent of nearly £4000 including the cheque of the 3rd August for £717 made payable to the plaintiffs none of which cheques was honoured. Unlike the Mr. P.G.M. Hutchinson he purported to be, he was not a man of substance with an established address in Caterham.
During the conversation from which a contract if any has to be derived "Hutchinson" knew he was not the person the plaintiffs believed him to be and to whom alone they made their offer to sell the car and to whom alone they intended to give possession of it in exchange for his cheque.
"Hutchinson" knew that the offer to sell the car in exchange for a cheque was not made to him as he was but only to an existing person whom he represented himself to be. If the plaintiffs are to be regarded as the acceptors of Hutchinson's offer to pay by cheque, he knew full well that it was not his cheque they were accepting but the cheque of the man they thought he was by reason of his persuasion and deceit.
The learned Judge finds that Miss Elsie Ingram intended to part not merely with possession but with the property in the car, but that she did so believing that the person to whom she was selling the car was Mr. P.G.M. Hutchinson of Stanstead House, Stanstead Road, Caterham with a number in the telephone directory and he further holds that if the entry in the telephone directory had not been confirmed by Miss Hilda Ingram the two sisters would not have accepted the cheque in payment or parted with the car.
If "Hutchinson" had paid cash for the car then it seems clear that there would have been a concluded and unimpeachable transaction in which the Identity and financial stability of the buyer would have been of no moment. This is not a case where the plaintiffs wished to withhold their car from any particular person or class of persons. Their desire, made quite obvious in the negotiations, was to ensure that they received payment and unless cash was paid the person with whom they were dealing was of major importance truly only as to his credit worthiness and this fact was equally clear to "Hutchinson" from the course which the negotiations took.
It does not seem to me to matter whether the right view of the facts is, as the Judge has held and as I would agree, that there was no concluded contract before the cheque book was produced and before the vital fraudulent statements were made or that there was a concluded contract which "Hutchinson" at once repudiated by refusing to pay cash and that this repudiation was accepted by the plaintiffs and the transaction was then and there at an end. The property would not have passed until cash had been paid and it never was paid or intended to be paid.
Was there a contract of sale subsequently made which led to the plaintiffs taking "Hutchinson's" cheque and in exchange for it handing over the car and its log book.
The judgment holds that there never was a concluded contract, applying, as I understand it, the elementary factors required by law to...
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