Walker

The plaintiffs owned an improved lot on London Street, in San Francisco, which they exchanged with McArthur Brothers, a firm of building contractors; for a lot on Twentieth Street in said city. The Twentieth Street lot was unimproved, and by the terms of the contract under, which the exchange was effected McArthur Brothers agreed to erect a seven-rcom dwelling-house thereon, and to convey it to the plaintiffs in exchange for their property free of all encumbrances except a two thousand five hundred dollar mortgage. Coffin & Company, a firm of real estate brokers, acted as the agents in effecting this exchange. Neither the McArthurs nor the plaintiffs had the money to pay for the erection of the building on the Twentieth Street lot, and Coffin & Company, through an employee of theirs named Woodfield, secured the money from the defendant Bernhardt H. Baumeister. Thereupon the plaintiffs conveyed their property to McArthur Brothers, and the latter in turn conveyed their Twentieth Street lot to the plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs executed to Baumeister and his wife, the other defendants, a promissory note for two thousand five hundred dollars and secured the same by their mortgage to…