Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/415

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BRAITHWAITE v. AKIN.
375

agreement until they are fully paid. The only possible theory on which it can be said that the cause of action for the conversion of the boat is connected with the interveners’ right to the boat's earnings is that there was an implied engagement on the part of the interveners not to interfere with defendant's right of possession while he was managing the boat under the contract. But we do not think that any such implied agreement can be said to have existed, imposing any different obligation upon the interveners than rested upon every other person, i. e. the obligation under the law not to disturb the defendant in the control of his own property. Even one who sells property to another cannot be said to have agreed, as part of the contract of sale, that he will not dis- turb the vendee in his possession. When the vendor has performed his part of the agreement, the contract is executed so far as he is concerned, and cannot thereafter be broken by him. If he subsequently seizes the property, and converts it to his own use, he is not liable for breach of his contract of sale or any of the terms thereof, but merely as a wrongdoer, independently of any agreement,—liable in the same manner as a stranger to the agreement would have been, and in no other way. We hold that the cause of action for the conversion of the boat had no connection, however slight, with the interveners’ right to the boat's earnings; and no mere partial or remote connection will suffice to bring the case within the statute. The connection must be immediate and direct. Pom. Rem. & Rem. Rights, § 776. Without attempting to lay down a general rule by which future cases are to be governed, we refer to the following decisions as sustaining our views on this point: Bazemore v. Bridges, (N. C.) 10S. E. Rep. 888; Humbert v. Brisbane, 25 S. C. 506; Manufacturing Co. v. Hall, 61 N. Y. 226; Woodruff v. Garner, 27 Ind. 4; Thorpe v. Phil- bin, (Com. Pl. N. Y.) 3 N. Y. Supp. 939; Edgerton v. Page, 20 N. Y. 281; Rothschild v. Whitman, (N.Y. App.) 30 N. E. Rep. 858; Brugmann v. Burr, (Neb.) 46 N. W. Rep. 644; Ward v. Blackwood, (Ark.) 3S. W. Rep. 624; MacDougall v. Maguire, 35 Cal. 274. Can the counterclaim be sustained as a set off in equity? We