## Facts

- Cummings identified a sow and pigs and offered to sell them to Sweet for $7.
- Sweet paid Cummings $7 and, believing the animals were Cummings’s, took possession and removed them.
- The sow and pigs belonged to a third party, not to Cummings.
- Cummings was charged with and convicted of larceny based on the fraudulent sale and removal.
- On appeal, Cummings argued larceny was not proven because he never personally moved the animals.

## Issues

1. Whether the asportation element of larceny requires the defendant to physically carry away the property.
2. Whether a defendant commits larceny by selling property he does not own and causing an innocent purchaser to remove it from the true owner’s possession.

## Decision

- The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.
- The court held that larceny’s “carrying away” element is satisfied when the defendant causes another person to remove the property from the owner’s possession.
- The defendant’s lack of personal physical handling of the property did not defeat larceny liability.

## Legal Principles

- Asportation for larceny does not require the defendant’s personal physical movement of the chattel; it is sufficient that the defendant procures or directs another to move it.
- A defendant may be treated as the principal thief when he uses an innocent intermediary to accomplish the trespassory taking and removal.
- A fraudulent sale of another’s property, coupled with inducing the buyer to take it, can constitute larceny when the true owner does not consent to the taking and the defendant acts with intent to steal.

## Conclusion

The court sustained Cummings’s larceny conviction, ruling that larceny is proved when a defendant fraudulently sells another’s property and causes an unwitting buyer to remove it, because the required carrying away can be accomplished through an innocent agent.


Cummings v. Commonwealth, 5 Ky. L. Rep. 200 (Ky. Ct. App. 1883)