Case ID: mo-app_130/html/0266-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "GOODE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

WRIGHTSMAN, Appellant, v. HERRICK, Respondent.
    St. Louis Court of Appeals,
    March 31, 1908.
    EVIDENCE: Abandoned Pleading: Pleading of Third Party. In an action for the value of certain merchandise claimed to have been shipped by the plaintiff to the defendant, it was error for the trial court to permit the introduction in evidence by the defendant of the answer in another case brought (and subsequently dismissed) by the same plaintiff against the railroad company, which carried the goods, for the loss of the same goods, where such answer contained averments that would be prejudicial to the plaintiff.
    Appeal from Greene Circuit Court. — Hon. Jas. T. Ne-ville, Judge.
    Reversed and remanded.
    
      
      Addison Broim and J. P. MoOammon for appellant.
    (1) The court erred in admission of testimony offered by defendant. In admitting tbe pleadings consisting of the petition and the answer of the defendant in plaintiff’s suit against the railroad company for the value of the same property. That an abandoned pleading is admissible in any case is a holding of the courts of this State comparatively recent. Murphy v. Type Foundry, 29 Mo. App. 544. (2) To hold, as the court did in this case, that the pleading of a third person— the opposing party in another action — could be read as evidence against the plaintiff is so without reason or precedent that one can scarcely adduce solemn argument against it. Mahan v. Brinell, 94 Mo. App. 171; Dowze-lot v. Rawlings, 4 Par., 58 Mo. 77; Cox v. Whitney, 9 Mo. 316; Stephens v. Crane, 116 Mb. 413.
   GOODE, J.

Plaintiff sued to recover the value of a box of household goods, chiefly bedclothing, alleged to have been lost by defendant. The goods were shipped by plaintiff from Ozark, Missouri, to Springfield, Missouri, over the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Company, consigned to defendant, who was to store them until called for by plaintiff. The lost box was one of three, the other two having been accounted for by defendant. In the first instance the plaintiff instituted an action against the railroad company for the loss of the box, believing it never had been delivered by the railroad company to defendant. But before said cause came to trial, plaintiff’s attorney, having ascertained facts which convinced him the box was delivered by the railroad company to defendant, dismissed the cause and instituted the present action. At the trial defendant’s counsel offered in evidence the pleadings in the abandoned case against the railroad company. These pleadings were objected to and especially the answer of the railroad company, as not containing admissions against interest by plaintiff and bence incompetent. Tbe objection was overruled, an exception saved, tbe answer admitted and this ruling is assigned for error on tbe appeal. We know of no theory on wbicb it was admissible, as it was an adverse pleading filed against the plaintiff by a party she bad sued. Its averments would not constitute admissions against interest by tbe plaintiff. [Stevens v. Crane, 116 Mo. 408, 22 S. W. 783.] It is on tbe theory that it contains admissions against interest that an abandoned pleading is received in evidence against tbe party who filed it. [Walser v. Ware, 141 Mo. 443, 464, 42 S. W. 928.]

We have been in some doubt as to whether tbe aver-ments in the answer of tbe railroad company could have influenced tbe jury against plaintiff. Said answer contained a general denial wbicb, in denying tbe railroad company ball ever received tbe box, was favorable to tbe plaintiff’s present action. But tbe denial was followed by a special plea founded on tbe bill of lading and providing that in case of loss of any of tbe property, tbe value of tbe contents of tbe lost box should be fixed at $5 per hundredweight and no more. Tbe railroad company set up this clause of tbe bill of lading and followed it by an averment that if tbe box was not delivered by tbe company to Herrick, the defendant in this suit, plaintiff should be limited in her recovery against tbe railroad company to $5 a hundredweight, or $10 in all, it being alleged tbe bo¡x only weighed two hundred pounds. As a whole tbe answer was of such a nature as to support the contention of Herrick in tbe present case, that tbe railroad company never delivered tbe box in controversy to him, which is tbe gravamen of bis defense.

The judgment is reversed and tbe cause remanded.

All concur.