Court Opinion

ID: 9865117
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:24:12.564306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:24.730267
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.

The defendant in error says that we are inconsistent in our opinion, since we follow Stone v. O’Brien, 7 Colo. 458, 4 Pac. 792, and then hold evidence which that case rejected to be competent. She is mistaken. The ground of the rejection of the evidence in that case was that possession by the agent Payne was not enough to make his declarations competent, to which we adhere, but the declaration which we now hold competent was made by an agent not merely in possession, but while in the act of exercising the duties of his agency and with reference to those duties. The distinction seems to us clear.
It is also claimed that the declaration of Young was self-serving. It is true that he was asserting his own title, and so was perhaps serving himself, but his statement, if known to be true, would, under the circumstances of this case, ruin him by subjecting all the property in question to his creditors. It was really, therefore, not self-serving but the opposite, and. so the reason for the self-serving rule is not present in this case.
Rehearing denied.
Mr. Justice Adams dissents.
Mr. Justice Adams dissenting.
I think we are all agreed that if Young’s statements were self-serving, that they are not admissible, but that if they were against his interest, they are admissible. How *196shall we find out which is the case? If he is the owner of the chattels, it may be argued that his statement that he is such owner would.be against interest because he would lose them under the execution; but if he is not the owner, his statements would be self-serving, because the application of the goods and chattels of another to the payment of his personal debts would result in diminishing his own liabilities at the expense of another, and thus augment his net assets without depleting his own stock.
Young’s ownership, then, is the criterion in determining whether his statements were self-serving or against interest. How is such ownership to be ascertained, so that we shall know whether his declarations are or are not admissible? It can be found out only by evidence other than his own. But when we have done this, we have no need of such testimony as to what Young said, either for or against the question of ownership, because such ownership being the issue to be decided, it has been settled and must be settled by evidence other than Young’s alleged declarations. For these reasons, I think his statements were inadmissible.
I cannot agree with the main opinion that it would ruin Young to have his debts paid with Mrs. Seloom’s property, if it was hers. Many a man would doubtless welcome being “ruined” by having his debts paid with the property of another. It might ruin the owner of the property, but not the debtor. It might save the latter from the bankruptcy courts.
I think that the decision of the majority of the court in this case is contrary to Stone v. O’Brien, 7 Colo. 458, 4 Pac. 792, which has been followed in this state for more than 40 years. Mr. Justice Helm’s conclusions were arrived at principally from the dissenting opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Luther S. Dixon of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Roebke v. Andrews, 26 Wis. 311. Justice Dixon’s dissent in that case was adopted by this court in *197Stone v. O’Brien and is highly commended by Justice Helm in the latter case.
The court’s decision in the instant case appears to me to violate the rule against hearsay evidence in admitting statements of third parties as to what Young is alleged to have said. If Young was not Mrs. Seloom’s agent, but a stranger, the statement of what he, as a stranger, said to another third person is too remote; if he was her agent, I cannot see how his statements, totally destructive of her property interests, can be said to be in any way within the scope of his employment, however or whenever made. If it is, then all that an agent would have to do to pay up his personal debts would be to circulate a rumor, or give out statements where he might think they would be most apt to reach the ear of the court, to the effect that his principal’s property belonged to him, thus allowing his creditors to use such statements as evidence in his own favor, and so subject his principal’s property to the payment of his own debts, whereas, as said by Justice Helm in Stone v. O’Brien, on page 461 of that opinion, the real owner could not call a single witness to prove what he has said on the subject. Young, in the instant case, stands in the position of Payne in Stone v. O’Brien. There the alleged statements of Payne were held to be inadmissible, but here Young’s statements are held to be admissible.
It must be admitted by the respective advocates of these opposing theories, that both sides will readily find many decisions of other states to support either view. The cases are in conflict, and the two divergent doctrines are like two flocks of birds, following their leaders and flying in opposite directions. The authorities are partially collated in a note to be found at page 692 of American Ann. Cases, 1914D, and the Colorado case of Stone v. O’Brien, supra, is represented as an outstanding precedent in favor of what the compiler of the volume regards as the minority view in the several states. *198But be it tbe minority or not, this court has not been divided on this question of evidence before, and hitherto Stone v. O’Brien has been the authorized text of the bar of this state. Now, after a lifetime, we have gone over to the other side, it seems to me. True, a distinction is attempted as to declarations made within the scope of an agent’s employment, from those made outside thereof, but I am unable to regard the giving of utterance by an agent to words that may result in turning his employer’s pocketbook inside out, as being any more within the scope of his employment than it would be to assume that a principal hires an agent for the purpose of mutilating his employer’s person, or that he is authorized so to do. If some basic principle of justice required us to reverse ourselves, I should not hesitate to subscribe to it, but I cannot feel that any such occasion exists. In any event, I believe that we should minimize the difficulties of trial practice by declaring ourselves squarely in favor of one side or the other of the two conflicting doctrines, and that we should not beguile ourselves with doubtful distinctions into the belief that we have not reversed Stone v. O’Brien in the seventh Colorado.
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.