Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/472

456 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. This really constitutes a second agency to perform in the regular way. It is not usual to find an express promise that the stock- broker will act as the customer's agent in performing. Nor is it usual to find at any point in the engagement of the stockbroker any express obligation binding him to perform the contract. It might be thought requisite that such an obligation should be created. If it were required it would be for the customer's pro- tection, and it is not necessary for that. First, because of the stockbroker's duty to act in good faith and with due care, which arises, as has been stated, from his agency to perform ; and sec- ondly, because the stockbroker, in order to relieve himself from the personal liability he assumes in contracting as he does in his own name, is always ready, without being under any obligation to the customer to do so, to perform any contract he may make on be- half of a customer if the customer supplies him with the means to do so. It does not seem necessary to describe the actual steps the stockbroker takes to perform in the regular way a contract or con- tracts he has made on behalf of a customer. On performing he must of course receive the securities which he contracted to buy where the customer ordered securities bought, and the price in money he contracted to sell for where the customer ordered secu- rities sold.^ Since he actually receives these as the agent of his customer, it is part of his duties to account^ for them promptly to the customer. This completes the transaction. Eliot Norton. New York. 1 It is said that, as " brokers " do not have their principals' property intrusted to them, they have no lien. Mechem on Agency, § 979. But as j/^<r^brokers do have their principals' property delivered to them, it would seem that they, like factors, to whom in many respects they may be compared, have a lien for their commissions, etc. 2 On the duty to account, see Mechem on Agency, §§ 955, 522. It is part of the stockbroker's duty, where he buys shares, to have them transferred into the customer's name. On what will excuse him from so doing, see Horton v. Morgan, 19 N. Y. 170.