Court Opinion

ID: 9826159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 15:26:50.878153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:53.806591
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Woods

dissents, and concurs in the opinion of the Chief Justice.

Mr. Chief Justice Jones.
I think there should be a reversal on the ground that there was no evidence of a wilful breach of duty on the part of defendant, and, therefore, the matter of punitive damage should not have been submitted to the jury.
1 The message was promptly transmitted to the terminal office, and the agent there ascertained that the sendee lived at Conners, about two and a half miles beyond the free delivery limits. He made two efforts to transmit over the telephone and found that the line was down, and notwithstanding his positive statement that the line *166was down, there was no contrary testimony. Plaintiff did testify that she had a telephone in her house, and had telephone connection with Holly Hill, the terminal station, but the manifest meaning of her testimony was that she had ■such connection as having a connecting telephone in her house would give, and not meaning that the line was then in operation. There was no testimony that any message was transmitted oVer that line on the day the message was sent, or on any day thereafter.
If the line had been in operation that day, or soon thereafter, surely some one could have been produced to say so.
Furthermore, while plaintiff testified, in a general way, that she was at her house on March 11, 1907, and for days thereafter, she modified that by saying she had not spent a night from home, that she might have been off a couple of hours, and had not been away farther than one-half mile from her home. It cannot, therefore, be said that plaintiff’s testimony contradicts the testimony of the defendant’s agent that he made the attempts to communicate with her over the telephone and failed. The Holly Hill agent made further inquiries whether any parties were in Holly Plill that would deliver the message, and found no one. • He then sent back a service message to the initial office, Edmunds, stating that the message had not been delivered, the party being three miles from office, and phone line down. He further testified that he then mailed the message in the post-office, addressed to the plaintiff at her postoffice. The plaintiff testified that she did not receive this letter. The case is peculiar, in that the sender of the message also lived without the free delivery limits of the initial office. The sender lived two miles out from the initial office, on a settlement road having no name, and he left no address. It is not disputed that the service message was sent back to the initial office, and that the agent there made inquiry as to where the sender could be found, and the agent testified that on.hearing that his address was Gaston, R. E. D. No. 2, he *167mailed the service message in the postoffice, postage prepaid, to the sender at such address. The sender; however, testified that he did not receive the letter, and, further, that he never made any inquiry at the defendant’s office in reference to the message. It further appears that the sender of the message, although he knew the sendee lived two and a half miles from the terminal office, did not contemplate a demand for extra charges for special delivery, as he testified that he told the agent of the initial office that the message could be delivered over the phone without any trouble, or anybody would be glad to carry it to her.
It thus appears that there was uncontradicted evidence of a real effort to deliver the message in the very manner contemplated by the parties at the time.
The plaintiff offered no testimony tending directly to show a wilful breach of duty, and only relied upon the presumption of wilfulness that would arise upon proof of a long unexplained delay in delivering or an unexplained failure to deliver. The case falls well within the rule of those cases which hold that undisputed evidence of a real effort to deliver repels the imputation o'f a wilful disregard of duty that might otherwise be inferred from a long unexplained delay or failure to deliver. Roberts v. Tel. Co., 73 S. C., 520, 53 S. E., 985; Butler v. Tel. Co., 77 S. C., 148, 57 S. E., 757; Johnson v. Tel. Co., 82 S. C., 87.