Case ID: miss_120/html/0277-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Smith, C. J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Smith et al. v. Chicago Portrait Co.
    [82 South. 145,
    Division A.
    No. 20776.]
    1. Evidence. Secondary evidence. Statement of account.
    
    Copies of accounts, proved by witnesses to be correctly transcribed from- the boohs are not admissible in evidence even though the books are shown to have been correctly kept.
    2. Same.
    In a suit by an employer' on a bond guaranteeing the faithful performance of an employee’s duties, an itemized statement of the employee’s account, testified by another employee who kept the books, as being a correct copy of the books, is not admissible in evidence although the books were correctly kept.
    Appeal from' the circuit court of Lincoln county.
    HoN D. M. Miller, Judge.
    Suit by the Chicago Portrait Company against Joe T. Smith and another: . From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. The facts are fully stated in, the opinion of the court.
    
      Nani & Yaivn, P. Z. Jones and J. W. Nair, for appellants.
    
      Brady & Bean, for appellee.
   Smith, C. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The appellee is a corporation engaged in the business of enlarging photographs, selling of picture frames, etc. Some time since it employed John W. Maddox as one of its district managers, who executed to it a bond, with the appellants as sureties thereon, to insure the faithful performance of his duties as district manager and the payment to appellee of any money which might come into his possession by virtue of his employment. On the termination of the relations between the ap-pellee and Maddox, it instituted this suit in the court below to recover from the appellants several hundred dollars alleged to be due it by Maddox and secured by the bond aforesaid. The only evidence introduced by the appellee of Maddox’s alleged shortage was an itemized statement of his account with it, one of its employees, under whose supervision its books of accounts were kept, having testified that the account had been correctly transcribed from the books, and that the books had been correctly kept.

The appellant’s objection to the introduction of this statement of Maddox’s account should have been sustained. Moody v. Roberts & Co., 41 Miss. 74; Pipes v. Norton, 47 Miss 61. And, because it was not, the judgment of the court below must be and is hereby reversed and the cause remanded. We decide no other question claimed by the appellants to be presented by this record.

Reversed and remanded.