Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/319

812 FEDESAL BEPOBTEB. �did so, the plaintiff, thTough him, consented to receîve the money from the defendant as an agent, and consented to Ma paying it over to his principal, and therefore must look to the principal and not to the agent for repayment. In view of this decision of the supreme court of the United States both of these rulings were erroneous. The assistant treasurer had no power to bind the United States by paying the money to the defendant, nor to consent that the defendant pay it over to any other person. If the seeretary did not approve his act it could never have any validity whatever, and does not stand in the way of the plaintiff's recovering the money. �For these errors the plaintiff is entitled to have the general verdict in favor of the defendant set aside; and upon the special verdict, that the name of the former owner of the bond ■was a forgery, the plaintiff is entitled to have Judgment. The finding of this fact left no issue to be tried under the pleadings. The receipt of the money is admitted in the an- swer. The special matter set up in the answer — the payment of the money immediately after its receipt to Borne, for whom defendant acted as attorney — eonstitutes no defence, because the plaintiff, upon the facts stated in the answer, never, by any public officer authorized to do so, paid the money to him as an agent. On the contrary, the officer al- leged to have paid it, the assistant treasurer, had no author- ity on behalf of the government to consent that the defend- ant pay it to his principal. �"Where a special verdict is inconsistent with a general ver- dict the former controls the latter and the court must render judgment accordingly. " N. Y. Code of Civil Procedure, § 1188; Fraschicris v. Henriques, 6 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) 251, 263. �There was no evidence of any regulation by the seeretary of the treasury conferring upon the assistant treasurer the power tp redeem this bond, or to receive it for redemption, otherwise than subject to examination and acceptanee at Washington; nor is any such regulation averred in the an- swer. No point is made in the answer, nor was there any «vidence, that there was any such delay in the examination of the bond at Washington that the defendant thereby lost ����