Case ID: cin-sup-ct-rep_1/html/0108-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Taft, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

N. Harris & Co., Plaintiffs in Error, v. Theodore Trimble, Defendant in Error.
    The United States revenue act, passed June 30, 1864, and amended July 13, 1866, does not invalidate an unstamped instrument as evidence in a State court, where the circumstances of the case relieve the party suing thereon from the presumption that he intended to evade the internal revenue law.
    In G-eneral Term on Error. — The defendant m error sued to recover $622, wages for four months in 1868. The original petition states that the written contract of hiring had been left with the plaintiffs in error when it was made and executed, and was withheld by them; but the defendant in error states that it contained an agreement that the defendant in error should serve the plaintiffs in error in the capacity of a manufacturer of tobacco for one year, and that the plaintiff in error should pay him therefor $1,800 ; that he entered the service and performed his duty faithfully till July 11, 1868, when the plaintiffs in error, without cause, refused to let him proceed with the work and discharged him, and refused to pay him, to his damage, $622.80. The petition was filed November 21, 1868.
    The plaintiffs in error set up a suit in common pleas, which they allege contained the same subject-matter, and which is still pending. They also deny the indebtedness; deny that they know of any written contract, and deny its existence; aver that plaintiff was employed by defendant at a weekly salary of $34.60, and so continued until July 12, 1868, when he was paid in full and discharged for incompetency.
    Evidence on the part of the plaintiff below showed that there was a written contract for a year, though the defendants, Harris & Co., denied such contract, and since the trial the defendants have found the written document and presented it with their application for a new trial, showing that it had not' been stamped, as required, by the revenue laws of the United States.
    
      Geo. E. Pugh and Wm. H. Pugh, for plaintiffs in error.
    
      S. A. Miller, for defendant in error.
   Taft, J.

The new trial is claimed on two grounds:

. First. That the contract for the year, though in writing, was not valid, because not stamped; and,

Second. Because the verdict was against the evidence as to the discharge, being without cause.

The second question has been decided by the jury, and we do not feel at liberty to interfere with this decision.

As to the objection that the contract was not stamped, as appears by the instrument now produced, the case falls fairly within the case of Harper v. Clark, 17 O. S. 190, where it was held that “the revenue act of Congress, passed June 80, 1864, does not invalidate an unstamped instrument required by the act to be stamped, unless the stamp he omitted with intent to evade the provisions of the act.” .

The circumstances of this ease relieved the plaintiff from any imputation of intention to evade the stamp act, as the document was in possession of the defendants, Harris & Co., and beyond the control of the plaintiff, who had reason to suppose that it had been duly stamped.

It is not necessary to go so far as the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts went, in 97 Mass. 452, in which it was held that “the provision of the United States statute of 1866, chap. 184, sec. 9 — that no instrument or document not duly stamped, as required by the internal revenue laws of the United States, shall be admitted or used in evidence in any court until tbe requisite stamps shall have been affixed thereto — applies only to tbe courts of tbe United States.”

[Leave to file a petition in error in tbe Supreme Court has been refused. — Eds.]

No question has been raised upon tbe alleged pendency of tbe action in tbe common pleas, nor is there evidence to show tbe identity of tbe causes of action. As that action was brought before this action accrued, it is certain that there can not be a .complete identity.

Tbe record shows no sufficient ground to set aside tbe judgment, which is therefore affirmed.