Curry v. Dahlberg
Decision Date | 09 December 1937 |
Docket Number | No. 34214.,34214. |
Citation | 110 S.W.2d 742 |
Parties | CURRY v. DAHLBERG. |
Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; James F. Green, Judge.
Suit by Charles C. Curry against B. G. Dahlberg. Judgment for the defendant, and the plaintiff appeals.
Affirmed.
Burnett, Stern & Liberman, Samuel H. Liberman and Robert L. Aronson, all of St. Louis, for appellant.
Ewing, Ewing & Ewing, of Nevada, for respondent.
HYDE, Commissioner.
This case, coming recently to the writer, is an action to recover certain amounts alleged to be due plaintiff under a contract made in July, 1914. Suit was commenced in 1918. The amount alleged to be due plaintiff, under the facts stated in the second count of his fourth amended petition, is $43,529.77. In other counts, it was alleged that other and additional amounts were due plaintiff, but that an accounting was necessary to determine these amounts and the total sum due from defendant to plaintiff. The court sustained a demurrer to all counts except the second, and upon trial on the second count, before the court without a jury, finding and judgment was for defendant. Plaintiff has appealed from this judgment.
One phase of this case was before this court in Dahlberg v. Fisse, 328 Mo. 213, 40 S.W.2d 606. The second count of the petition upon which the case was tried contained substantially all of the allegations set out in Dahlberg v. Fisse. Because of the view we take, it is not necessary to rule the assignments on the demurrers, so we will not state the allegations made in other counts. Plaintiff was engaged in the lumber business. He had started to work in that business when he was sixteen years old and, in 1914, had been engaged in that business for about thirty years. He was not a lawyer. Defendant was described as a "commerce expert" or "rate expert," "and as such had formed an organization for the acquisition of contracts for refunds exacted in violation of the maximum freight rate acts of Missouri of 1905 [pages 102, 104] and 1907 [pages 171, 187]." See State ex rel. Barker v. Chicago & Alton R. Co., 265 Mo. 646, 178 S.W. 129, L.R.A.1916C, 309; White v. Delano, 270 Mo. 16, 191 S.W. 1012; State of Missouri v. C., B. & Q. R. Co., 241 U.S. 533, 36 S.Ct. 715, 60 L.Ed. 1148; Missouri Rate Cases (Knott v. C., B. & Q. R. Co.) 230 U.S. 474, 33 S.Ct. 975, 57 L.Ed. 1571. In July, 1914, defendant had eight solicitors in Missouri who were seeking to persuade shippers in Missouri to turn over their claims for freight overcharges to defendant for collection. Defendant was not a lawyer, but signed the claimants' names, to petitions and claims filed in court, "by B. G. Dahlberg as agent for the petitioners," and had them presented by lawyers employed by him.
Contracts made between such shippers and defendant usually contained the following provisions:
The circumstances of plaintiff's relations with defendant, and the terms of the contract sued on, are stated in plaintiff's brief, as follows:
Memo:
Defendant's activities with regard to the Frisco claims are described in an agreed statement of facts, as follows:
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