Case ID: ill-app_187/html/0072-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Baume", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Clara Morris, Appellee, v. Harder’s Fireproof Storage and Van Company and E. C. Luedeka, Appellants.
    Gen. No. 18,970.
    (Not to be reported in full.) .
    Appeal from the County Court of Cook county; the Hon. W. F. Slater, Judge, presiding. Heard in the Branch Appellate Court at the October term, 1912.
    Reversed and remanded.
    Opinion filed May 20, 1914.
    Statement of the Case.
    Action of trover by Clara Morris against Harder’s Fireproof Storage and Van Company a corporation, and E. C. Luedeka to recover the value of a piano and a stool which plaintiff placed in storage in a warehouse of the defendant Storage Company. Defendants pleaded the general issue and also a special plea averring that plaintiff placed her piano in storage with the Storage Company and agreed to pay one dollar per month; that plaintiff failed to pay the storage charges and that pursuant to the provisions of section 33, art. 2 of the act relating to warehouses in force July 1, 1907, J. & A. 9032, said Storage Company sold the piano for thirty dollars the amount due for storage and expenses of sale. A trial .by jury resulted in a verdict and judgment against defendants for four hundred and twenty dollars. To reverse the judgment, defendants appeal.
    Abstract of the Decision.
    1. Warehousemen, § 15
      
      —when sale for charges treated as a conversion. Where a storage company sells goods for charges and. purchases the same at its own sale, the owner may elect to treat the sale as a conversion; since the duty of a storage company as a public warehouseman arising out of the fiduciary relation created thereby precludes it, at such election of the owner, from asserting ownership of the property claimed to have been acquired by purchase at its own sale.
    2. Trover and conversion, § 47*—when amount of damages recovered excessive. In trover for the conversion of a piano, a verdict finding the value of the piano to be four hundred and fifty dollars at the time of its conversion held manifestly excessive, it appearing that it had been purchased new upon the instalment plan more than six years before the conversion for five hundred and fifty dollars and that it had been used and moved a couple of times.
    Robert W. Dunn, for appellant; Charles J. Monahan, of counsel.
    Beauregard F. Moseley, for appellee.
    
      
      See Illinois Notes Digest, Vols XI to XV, and Cumulative Quarterly, sain© iopic and section number.
    
   Mr. Justice Baume

delivered the opinion of the court.