Cases - Peterson v Moloney

Record details

Name

Peterson v Moloney

Date

(1951)

Citation

84 CLR 91

Keywords

Estate agency

Summary

The plaintiff vendor employed an estate agent to find a purchaser for her house. The estate agent found a prospective purchaser, the defendant. The purchaser paid the purchase price to the agent. This money was not paid over to the vendor (the agent, who became bankrupt, appears to have misappropriated it), so the vendor sued the purchaser for the money. The purchaser claimed that the agent had authority to receive the money, alleging that he was expressly authorised by the vendor to sell the property and apply the proceeds in a particular way.

The High Court of Australia said that such authority involves or implies an authority to receive the proceeds but, on the evidence, the agent had no such authority. Therefore, as it was settled law (following English case law) that an agent employed to find a purchaser has no implied authority to receive the purchase money, the money was still due. Nor was there sufficient evidence of estoppel, holding-out or ratification. If it had been found that the vendor had executed the transfer in the knowledge that the purchaser had paid the purchase price, it could be inferred that she had ratified the receipt of money from the agent. But in the absence of such a finding, there was no evidence of ratification.