Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/151/149/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 11:10:48+00:00

Document:
This Court is not committed to the general doctrine that written memoranda of subjects and events, pertinent to the issues in a case, made contemporaneously with their taking place, and supported by the oath of the person making them, are admissible in evidence for any other purple than to refresh the memory of that person as a witness.
When it does not appear that such a memorandum was made contemporaneously with the happening of the events which it describes, it should not be submitted to the jury.
If such a memorandum, made in a book containing other matter relating to the issues which is not proper for submission to the jury, be admitted in evidence, the leaves containing the inadmissible matter should not go before the jury.
In such case, it is not enough to direct the jury to take no notice of the objectionable matter, but the leaves containing it should be sealed up and protected from inspection by the jury before the book goes into the conference room.
In Massachusetts, where an action in tort, grounded on fraud of the defendant, is commenced more than six years after the cause of action arose, and the general statute of limitations applicable to actions sounding in tort is set up, if the fraud is not secret in its nature, and such as cannot readily be ascertained, it is necessary to show some positive act of concealment by the defendant to take the case out of the operation of that statute, and the mere silence of the defendant, or his failure to inform the plaintiff of his cause of action, does not so operate.
This was an action at law brought by Sarah A. Preble to recover of the defendants Bates and Walley, stockbrokers, the value of certain securities, the property of the plaintiff, which she alleged had been converted by the defendants to their own use.
The facts were substantially as follows: Mrs. Preble, a widow and a resident of Portland, Maine, acquired by her husband's will certain securities, consisting of stocks and bonds, which she kept in a box in the vaults of the Union Safe-Deposit Company, in Boston. Upon the trial, she gave evidence tending to show that she entrusted the key of the box to her son, Edward Preble; that she visited the box herself in 1878, and found all her securities there; that she next visited it in the autumn of 1882, and found them all gone; that at various times between these dates, her son had abstracted these securities from the box, to which she had given him access, and had taken them to the defendants, who were stockbrokers, without authority from her, and that the defendants had sold the securities for him; that Walley, one of the defendants, had notice that the securities belonged to the plaintiff, and had fraudulently concealed from her the fact of the conversion, and that she did not discover the conversion until within six years before bringing of the suit.
Defendants claimed that some of her securities they had never sold or dealt with in any way; that others they had received from Edward Preble, and had disposed of by his directions, and upon his account, in the ordinary course of business, believing them to be his property; that they had no knowledge or notice that any of the property belonged to the plaintiff; that in fact some of the securities did not belong to her, and that if she ever had any cause of action against them for the conversion of these securities, the same arose more than six years before the bringing of her suit, and hence that such action was barred by the statute of limitations.
damages, and handed to the court with their verdict a schedule containing the special items upon which they held the defendants liable, showing the securities which they found to have been converted by the defendants, with the value of the same and the date of their conversion, from which interest was computed. Upon motion for new trial, the court held that there was no evidence to sustain the finding of the jury with respect to certain of the securities; that the value of such securities should be remitted from the verdict, or that a new trial should be granted. Judgment was finally entered for the plaintiff for $28,496.52, being the amount of the verdict less the amount remitted. Defendants sued out a writ of error from this Court.
There are thirty-four assignments of error in this case, many of which are of little importance, and as we have come to the conclusion that the case must be reversed and a new trial ordered, it is neither necessary nor advisable that we should dispose of them all.
"it was her own book, in her own handwriting, never seen by any one until it went into the hands of counsel; that the entries were made in it from time to time; that it showed the securities which she had, which went into the box in the safe-deposit vaults."
"that the figures at the top in pencil she put there when she took the page out of the other book, and put it into that book; those figures in pencil were 1877 and 1878; that she did not remember at what time she did this; that it was before 1882, and was after she cut it out of the other books; . . . that she had no memorandum, except what was on that paper in the book; that some of it was written in ink, and some in pencil; that what was in ink was written when it was in the other book; that the pencil part was written after it was put in this book; that the summing up was made by her, but was not correct; that at the bottom of the page the value appeared to be as of 1871; she did not know whether it was its correct value in 1871 or 1877,"
"that the entries in her memorandum book were not reliable; that she could not tell when she made the entries upon them, or when the figures were set down; that she could not tell why she made the entries, nor why she had struck out any of them."
the witness, but was laid before the jury as independent evidence of the character and value of the securities.
the memory with great difficulty. If, at the time when an entry of aggregate quantities or values was made, the witness knew it was correct, it is hard to see why it is not at least as reliable as the memory of the witness."
This case might have been properly supported on the ground that they were entries made in the usual course of business, since, from the report of a similar case (9 Wall. 76 U. S. 677), this seems to have been the character of the entries. See also Chaffee v. United States, 18 Wall. 516.
In Maxwell's v. Wilkinson, 113 U. S. 656, a memorandum of a transaction which took place twenty months before its date and which the person who made the memorandum testified that he had no recollection of, but knew it took place because he had so stated in the memorandum, and because his habit was never to sign a statement unless it were true, was held to be inadmissible. Many of the authorities are cited, but the inadmissibility of the memorandum was put upon the ground that it was made long after the transaction it purported to state. The general question of the admissibility of such memoranda as independent evidence was not, however, decided.
"without even looking at his written statement, a clear, distinct recollection of every essential fact stated in it. If he had such present recollection, there was no necessity whatever for reading that paper to the jury. "
We do not regard any of these cases as committing this Court to the general doctrine that such memoranda are admissible for any other purpose than to refresh the memory of the witness.
"saw any Oregon Navigation six percent bonds, and never saw or received any Eastern Illinois bonds; . . . that she never had any New York and New England seven percent bonds in her possession, and never saw them in her box; that she never saw any certificate of Consolidated Virginia stock,"
and yet entries relating to these securities appear upon several of the pages of the book. Upon two or three of the pages, there is not an entry that has the remotest connection with the question at issue, and it is difficult to see any ground upon which these pages were admitted.
Upon the whole, we think these memoranda, if inadmissible for no other reason, were not sufficiently authenticated to make it proper to submit them to the jury.
rest of the book to be sealed up or otherwise protected from the inspection of the jury, but that when the jury were about to retire, the plaintiff offered to send the whole book without such protection, and the court directed the jury not to examine any part of the book except what was put in evidence, and permitted the whole book with that instruction to go to the jury. To this the defendants excepted. We think the court should have adhered to its directions to take such measures as were necessary to prevent the jury from seeing other portions of the book, as they contained matter which, though bearing upon the issue, was wholly inadmissible as testimony and was calculated to create in the minds of the jury a strong prejudice against the defendants. This error was not cured by the instructions to the jury not to examine any part of the book except what was put in evidence. Such instructions might have healed the error if the contents of the book had been unimportant. But the objectionable portions in this case were such as were likely to attract the eye of the jury, and accident or curiosity would be likely to lead them, despite the admonition of the court, to read the plaintiff's comments upon the defendants and her private meditations, which had no proper place in their deliberations. The precise question involved here arose in Kalamazoo Novelty Co. v. McAlister, 36 Mich. 327, where an entire book was suffered to be taken to the jury room when but three pages were in evidence, and it was held that the instruction not to look at the unproved part should not be taken as relieving its admission to the jury room from error. See also Commonwealth v. Edgerly, 10 Allen 184; Stoudenmire v. Harper, 81 Ala. 242.
"SEC 1. The following actions shall be commenced within six years next after the cause of action accrues, and not afterwards. . . . "
"Fourth. All actions of tort, except those hereinafter mentioned. . . ."
"SEC. 14. If a person liable to any of the actions mentioned in this chapter fraudulently conceals the cause of such action from the knowledge of the person entitled to bring the same, the action may be commenced at any time within six years after the person so entitled discovers that he has such cause of action."
of the cause of action as will prevent the bar of the statute. The court cited with approval the case of Cole v. McGlathry, 9 Greenl. 131, in which the defendant had received from the plaintiff funds to pay certain debts, and falsely affirmed that he had paid them. It was held that though he was guilty of a breach of moral and legal duty, having added falsehood to his neglect to pay, yet it was not such a fraudulent concealment as would take the case out of the statute, because the plaintiff had the means of discovering the truth at all times by inquiry of the persons who should have received the money. The court also cited the case of McKown v. Whitmore, 31 Me. 448. This was an action to recover money which the defendant had agreed to deposit in a certain bank for the plaintiff, and which he told the plaintiff he had deposited. It was held that even if this statement was untrue, it did not constitute a fraudulent concealment, because the plaintiff had at all times the means of discovering the truth. In Walker v. Soule, 138 Mass. 570, the action was founded upon certain representations made by the defendant, the administrator of an estate, that he was licensed by the probate court to sell the real estate of his intestate, that he had good right to sell it, that the title to it was good, and that the deed, a copy of which was in evidence, was in proper form, and sufficient to pass the title. It was held that as these representations were as to the contents of public records, which the plaintiff had full opportunity of examining, they were not sufficient to prove a subsequent fraudulent concealment from the knowledge of the plaintiff. So in Abbott v. North Andover, 145 Mass. 484, it was held that the representation by a township officer that he had authority to bind the town by the renewal of a promissory note when in fact he had no such authority was not a fraudulent concealment by the town of the cause of action, and hence that an action could not be maintained on the note, of which this was a renewal, which was not brought within six years.
"must necessarily act through its officers. Its officer upon whom it relied in this instance was the defendant, who had charge of this particular transaction with Pierce, and he who should have disclosed the cause of action was the party engaged in concealing it."
Wood v. Carpenter, 101 U. S. 135; Felix v. Patrick, 145 U. S. 317.
"Now gentlemen, I shall charge you, as matter of law, this: that if you believe that the defendants here were not guilty of any fraud in these transactions; if you believe that they took these negotiable securities in, if you please, the ordinary course of their business, and sold them, then Mrs. Preble would not have a right in this case to bring suit for anything that took place prior to January, 1881; but, on the contrary, if, from the evidence, you believe that Walley, one of the defendants, conspired with young Preble to obtain these bonds, and afterwards to conceal the fact from the mother, he (Edward) having the key to the safety box containing the securities, this would be evidence going to prove a fraudulent concealment of the cause of action such as would bring it within the exception of the statute. So that, gentlemen, whether there was a fraudulent concealment of the transaction such as would make Mrs. Preble's whole claim good here turns upon the question whether you believe from the evidence which has gone in before you that the defendants here acted in the ordinary course of their business, or whether you believe upon the evidence that one of the defendants, Walley, was a coconspirator with Preble in these transactions, and that young Preble also had the key to his mother's safe, so that, if you please, his mother with great difficulty could obtain access to it, or knowledge as to whether those securities existed or not. Those rules of law, gentlemen, you will apply upon the subject of the statute of limitations."
upon whom it is committed, he would practically lose the benefit of the statute though he may not have made the slightest effort to keep it secret. The vice of the instruction in this particular was that there was no evidence whatever that the defendants, or either of them, said or did anything before or after the securities came into their hands to conceal the transaction from the plaintiff. There was no claim that the defendant Bates knew anything about it. Defendant Walley was the active partner in the transaction, and there is nothing to indicate that he made any effort at concealment. While he sometimes called at the plaintiff's house, it does not appear that he ever spoke to her about business until the autumn of 1882 when he called upon her and told her that her son was in trouble, and had been arrested in New York. Upon plaintiff's offering to raise money and assist him by the sale of some of her bonds and stock, he then informed her that he was afraid they were lost. Within two or three days after that, she went to the vault and found that they had been abstracted. Granting that the relations between Edward Preble and his mother were such as to make a revelation of the facts a duty upon his part, there were no such confidential relations between the plaintiff and defendants as would cause silence upon their part to be imputed as a fraud. Even admitting that they and Edward Preble were co-conspirators, and that they were responsible for his acts connected with such conspiracy, it would be carrying the doctrine to an unwarrantable extent to hold that his subsequent silence upon the subject could be chargeable to them.
Reversed and remanded to the circuit court with instructions to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial.

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