Judges: TERRELL, J.
Attorneys: J. McHenry, Jones, for Plaintiff in Error;
Cary D. Landis, Attorney General, and Roy Campbell, Assistant, for the State.
Filed: Nov. 27, 1935
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: Plaintiff in error was informed against, tried, and convicted of the crime of embezzlement in the Criminal Court of Record of Escambia County, pursuant to Section 7247, Compiled General Laws of 1927. He was sentenced to serve two years in the state penitentiary and seeks to be relieved of that judgment on writ of error. *Page 629 The record discloses that plaintiff in error was a stockholder in a company known as the Realty Corporation and that he was the agent of Fisher Rental Agency, Inc., bot
Summary: Plaintiff in error was informed against, tried, and convicted of the crime of embezzlement in the Criminal Court of Record of Escambia County, pursuant to Section 7247, Compiled General Laws of 1927. He was sentenced to serve two years in the state penitentiary and seeks to be relieved of that judgment on writ of error. *Page 629 The record discloses that plaintiff in error was a stockholder in a company known as the Realty Corporation and that he was the agent of Fisher Rental Agency, Inc., both..
More
Involved in the point to be decided in this case is whether the defendant, an official of Fisher Rental Agency, committed a violation of Section 7247 C.G.L., that is, committed statutory embezzlement, when he used his power to draw checks by drawing on Fisher Rental Agency, whose agent he was, and causing it to be deposited to the account of a separate corporation known as the Realty Corporation of Pensacola, in which he, defendant, was a stockholder, but without personally gaining anything thereby. In other words, must statutory embezzlement be predicated upon a showing of "causa lucri" or "animus perordi" in order to sustain it, or does the larceny rule of Grooves v. State, 82 Fla. 427, 90 So. 2d 473, 26 A.L.R. 382, apply?
As counsel for the plaintiff in error Groover in the case last cited I made insistence that such was the law as to larceny. Since embezzlement is akin to larceny, its common law rule of"causa lucri" is not inept, although this Court has rejected it in the Groover case and the Adams case, 78 Fla. 395, 399,83 So. 2d 271, insofar as larceny is concerned. I concur in the reversal.
