White v. Kirchmann

STURTEVANT, J.

This is an action brought to enforce certain alleged trusts in certain personal property. The defendants had judgment in the trial court and two of the alleged beneficiaries have appealed under section 953a of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Prior to her death Jane Sanders had become the owner of bonds of the federal government and of certain corporations and had said bonds on deposit in her safe-deposit box. It was the theory of the alleged beneficiaries that she had attached to some of the securities written directions indicating to whom such securities should be delivered in the event of her death, and that on the evening before her death she called to her side the defendant, Anna Coffer, and requested the said Anna Coffer to send certain of the securities to the individuals whose names were marked on, or according to the written directions attached to each of said securities, and that Anna Coffer accepted

[570]

the trust and agreed to comply with the directions of the trustor. The allegations of the plaintiffs’ complaint setting forth the foregoing theory were denied by the defendants in their answers. On the trial of the case the plaintiffs relied on the testimony of Anna Coffer to prove their case. After the ease had been fully tried and submitted the trial court decided the ease against the plaintiffs and made findings both general and specific in which it found the facts in favor of the defendants and against the plaintiffs. In their brief the appellants contend that the evidence shows without conflict that the allegations of the amended complaint are true and that the findings to the contrary are unsupported by evidence. These contentions are not supported by the record.

As far back as 1910 or 1911 Mrs. Sanders had become the owner of several of the bonds which were in her box at the time of her death. Bach bond was in the sum of one thousand dollars, and there were nine bonds of the Great Western Power Company, three of the Pacific Gas and Electric, two of the City Electric, and one California Unifier. The bonds at that time were in the safe-deposit box, to which Mrs. Sanders had "a key and Anna Coffer, also had a key. Anna Coffer testified that Mrs. Sanders gave her the bonds in the year 1910 or 1911, and that the donee demurred to accepting the gift. “When I got those bonds I made a fuss; I did not want to take them from her, and she cried, and she said she wanted me to have them because of what I had done for her husband during his illness. So I said, ‘I will never take them, unless if you need them you take them back.’ Before her death in 1918 Mrs. Sanders had acquired other bonds of the federal government and all of the bonds were in the safe deposit box.” The night before her death in the hospital Mrs. Sanders said to Mrs. Coffer, “I took those bonds and marked them. Will you send them the way I marked them?” To that request Mrs. Coffer testified that she did not give an answer but that her reply to Mrs. Sanders was in the nature of requesting her to preserve her strength. She further testified that Mrs. Sanders did not indicate the specific articles that were marked, nor how they were marked; in short, her testimony was to the effect that she neither accepted nor refused to accept the alleged trust.