Hampton v. Stephens

I respectfully dissent.

It seems to me that the majority opinion reaches a bad result. The opinion says that the court,1 defendant’s principal, owned the money after plaintiff handed it to defendant, and not the plaintiff, and that plaintiff therefore had no cause of action against defendant when she diverted the money to her own purposes.

The following imaginary situation would be an exact parallel to the present case:

I take $1,000 in cash into the bank and hand it to the teller, with instructions to apply it on and pay off my promissory note owing to the bank. I leave the bank without the…