Payne

This is an action of trover. The plaintiff seeks to charge defendants with $2,796.32 and costs, for an alleged conversion *340 of one hundred shares of the stock of the “ Northern Belle Mill and Mining Company,” and also to have them adjudged guilty of fraud. The complaint was demurred to on several grounds, and the demurrer overruled. Defendants afterward answered, and, upon a trial had in the absence of defendants and their attorneys, the Court gave judgment for the plaintiff for the amount sued for, in gold coin, and also adjudged that the defendants were guilty of fraud. The appeal comes to this Court upon the judgment roll, and the appellants claim that the lower Court erred in overruling defendants’ demurrer to the complaint, upon the grounds that there is no allegation that the plaintiff owned, or that the defendants converted, any certificates of shares of stock; and that the allegation of fraud is insufficient to sustain the judgment that the defendants were guilty of fraud in the supposed conversion. The principal question is, whether shares of stock, eo nomine, are property for which an action, in the nature of an action of trover, can be maintained.

At common law,…