Case ID: mass_105/html/0112-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Gray, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

William Regan vs. Isaac P. Dickinson.
    In an action for work done by the plaintiff in lathing the defendant’s house, to which the defence was tbi the plaintiff was not employed by the defendant, but by a builder with whom tht p.aintiff had contracted to do all his lathing for the season, evidence on the part of the defendant that he had contracted with the builder to do all the lathing of the house, before the plaintiff began to work thereon, is admissible.
    Contract for work performed by the plaintiff in lathing a house of the defendant at a stipulated price by the day.
    At the trial in the superior court, before Dewey, J., the plaintiff introduced evidence tending to prove that he was employed by the defendant to do the work for him by the day. The defendant introduced evidence tending to show that he did not employ the plaintiff to do the work, but that the plaintiff was sent to the house to do it by Alpheus Hawks, a builder, under an oral contract which Hawks had made with him previously, to do all Hawks’s lathing for the season, at a stipulated price by the bundle. The defendant then offered to prove that he had contracted orally with Hawks, to do all the lathing of the house, before the plaintiff commenced work there. To the introduction of this evidence the, plaintiff objected, and the judge refused to admit it. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, and the defendant alleged exceptions.
    
      E. Morris, for the defendant.
    
      S. E. Seymour, for the plaintiff.
   Gray, J.

The evidence introduced by the defendant tended to show that the plaintiff did not go to work on the defendant’s house under a contract with him, but under a contract with a builder, the terms of which were that the plaintiff should do all that builder’s work of the same kind for the season. In order to maintain that defence, it was necessary to prove that the work on the defendant’s house was part of the work which the builder was authorized to do. Evidence that the builder had a previous contract with the defendant to do all such work on his house was therefore competent to prove such authority, and thereby, in connection with the testimony already introduced by the defendant, to show that the work done by the plaintiff was within the terms of his own contract with the builder.

Exceptions sustained.