Opinion ID: 1953123
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Joint Ventures and Partnerships

Text: Concerning joint ventures and partnerships, the district court instructed as follows: A partnership is an association of persons organized as a separate entity to carry on a business for profit. The existence of a partnership requires an agreement of two or more parties, and their intention to create a partnership is to be ascertained from all the evidence and circumstances. A partnership is a contract of two or more persons to place their money, effects, labor, skill or some or all of them, in lawful commerce or business, and to divide the profit or bear the loss in certain proportions. A joint venture is in the nature of a partnership, but may exist where persons embark on an undertaking without entering on the prosecution of a business as partners strictly but engage in a common enterprise for their mutual benefit. To constitute a joint venture, there must be an agreement to enter into an undertaking in the objects of which the parties have a community of interest and common purpose in performance, and each of the parties must have equal voice in the manner of its performance and control over the agency used therein, though one party may entrust performance to another. The principal distinction between a partnership and a joint venture is that the latter may relate to a single transaction. The burden of establishing the existence of either a partnership or joint venture is upon the party asserting that the relationship exists. Leroy Grams complains that the instruction did not include his proposed language that ft]he absence of a mutual interest in the profits or benefits is conclusive that a partnership or joint venture does not exist and that [t]he mere pooling of property, money, assets, skill or knowledge does not create the relationship. He concludes that the absence of this language minimized the importance of the information reflected in his and his father's tax returns and that the jury was misled into thinking that as the father and Leroy Grams both had access to the checking account, a joint venture or partnership must have existed. But it is not error for a trial court to refuse a requested instruction if the substance of the proposed instruction is contained in the instructions actually given. Melcher v. Bank of Madison, 248 Neb. 793, 539 N.W.2d 837 (1995); Scharmann v. Dayton Hudson Corp., 247 Neb. 304, 526 N.W.2d 436 (1995); Nichols v. Busse, 243 Neb. 811, 503 N.W.2d 173 (1993). The substance of the language proposed by Leroy Grams regarding joint ventures and partnerships was contained in the instruction actually given. However, something more regarding the issue of joint ventures and partnerships needs to be written. The burden is on the plaintiff in replevin to establish facts necessary to recover, and these must be shown to have existed at the time the action was commenced. Arcadia State Bank v. Nelson, 222 Neb. 704, 386 N.W.2d 451 (1986). The gist of a replevin action is the unlawful detention of the property at the inception of the suit and the rights of the parties with respect to possession of the property at that time. Id. The cardinal question in every replevin action is whether the plaintiff therein was entitled to the immediate possession of the property replevied at the commencement of the action. Id. It was therefore incumbent upon the bank to prove that it was entitled to immediate possession of the cattle in question. Proving the existence of a joint venture or partnership is not one of the elements that needs to be proved. The bank presented evidence that D & C Cattle had signed a financing statement and note, that the proceeds of the note were placed in a checking account with a signature card on file with the name D & C Cattle, that the note was secured by all livestock of D & C Cattle, that checks had been drawn on the account to purchase cattle and the account had been set up in order for D & C Cattle to purchase cattle, and that the note was in default and demand had been made. We must also observe that no partnership or joint venture issue was pled by the parties. However, the district court concluded that evidence was lacking as to what specific cattle in the possession of Leroy Grams were owned by the father doing business as D & C Cattle, and therefore, it instructed the jury on the law relating to such entities. It is axiomatic that a litigant is entitled to have the jury instructed only upon those theories of the case which are presented by the pleadings and which are supported by competent evidence. Burns v. Metz, 245 Neb. 428, 513 N.W.2d 505 (1994). Jury instructions are to be confined to the issues presented by the pleadings and supported by the evidence. Long v. Hacker, 246 Neb. 547, 520 N.W.2d 195 (1994). It is error to submit to the jury an issue which is not pleaded in the case. Rosberg v. Lingenfelter, 246 Neb. 85, 516 N.W.2d 625 (1994). It is more than a mere probability that an instruction on a matter not an issue in the litigation distracts the jury in its effort to answer legitimate, factual questions raised during trial. Long, supra . On the other hand, jury instructions are subject to harmless error analysis, and an erroneous jury instruction requires reversal only if the error adversely affects the substantial rights of the complaining party. David v. DeLeon, 250 Neb. 109, 547 N.W.2d 726 (1996); Bunnell v. Burlington Northern RR. Co., 247 Neb. 743, 530 N.W.2d 230 (1995). In Long, supra, the appellant unsuccessfully objected to the reasonable care portion of a jury instruction at trial. On appeal, he assigned not only that portion of the instruction as error, but also the portion concerning the law of efficient intervening cause. We noted that because the appellant had failed to object at trial to that portion of the instruction, he could not, absent plain error, raise the issue for the first time on appeal. We wrote: Plain error exists where there is an error, plainly evident from the record but not complained of at trial, which prejudicially affects a substantial right of a litigant and is of such a nature that to leave it uncorrected would cause a miscarriage of justice or result in damage to the integrity, reputation, and fairness of the judicial process. Plain error may be asserted for the first time on appeal or be noted by the appellate court on its own motion. Id. at 554-55, 520 N.W.2d at 201. We then ruled that the instruction constituted plain error. Here, Leroy Grams objected to the instruction, not on the basis that it dealt with issues which were not pled, but because he wanted his own version of an instruction on the law of partnerships and joint ventures. In such a circumstance, there can be no plain error; it can hardly be said that a substantial right of Leroy Grams was prejudiced by the giving of an instruction on an issue he desired the jury to consider, albeit in another form. While in hindsight, because of the problem with identifying the collateral, Leroy Grams may have been better served by objecting to any instruction on partnerships and joint ventures, he certainly did not think so at the time. Just as a party cannot complain of error which the party has invited the court to commit, Terry v. Duff, 246 Neb. 524, 519 N.W.2d 550 (1994), and Norwest Bank Neb. v. Bowers, 246 Neb. 83, 516 N.W.2d 623 (1994), neither can plain error be predicated on an action the party has invited the court to commit.