Kujek v. Goldman

Decision Date06 October 1896
Citation150 N.Y. 176,44 N.E. 773
PartiesKUJEK v. GOLDMAN et al.
CourtNew York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Appeal from common pleas of New York city and county, general term.

Action by Johann August Kujek against Manassah L. Goldman, impleaded with Katie Kujek. No answer was served by defendant Kujek, and no judgment was taken against her. From a judgment of the general term of the court of common pleas (29 N. Y. Supp. 294) affirming a judgment of the city court (25 N. Y. Supp. 753) affirming a judgment entered on a verdict against defendant Goldman, he appeals, by permission. Affirmed.

Prior to January 17, 1891, the defendant Katie Kujek, then named Katie Moritz, was an unmarried woman employed as a domestic in the family of the defendant Goldman, by whom she had become pregnant. Upon discovering the fact, the defendants, as it is alleged in the complaint, comspired to conceal their disgrace, and to induce the plaintiff to marry the said Katie, and to that end represented to him that she was a virtuous and respectable woman, and he, believing the same, did marry her on the day last named. The plaintiff, as it was further alleged, would not have contracted said marriage if he had known the facts. Subsequently, and on July 29, 1891, owing to such pregnancy, she gave birth to a child, of which said Goldman was the father. The answer of Goldman was, in substance, a general denial. No answer was served by the other defendant, and no judgment was taken against her. The evidence tended to sustain the allegations of the complaint.

Wheeler H. Peckham, for appellant.

August P. Wagener, for respondent.

VANN, J. (after stating the facts).

The verdict of the jury has established as the facts of this case, beyond our power to review, that the plaintiff married Katie Moritz in the belief that she was a virtuous girl, induced by the representations of the defendant to that effect, when in fact she was at the time pregnant by the defendant himself. The case was submitted to the jury upon the theory that if Goldman, knowing that Katie was unchaste, by false representations that she was virtuous induced the plaintiff to marry her, he was entitled to recover damages, and the jury found a verdict in his favor for $2,000. While no precedent is cited for such an action, it does not follow that there is no remedy for the wrong, because every form of action, when brought for the first time, must have been without a precedent to support it. Courts sometimes of necessity abandon their search for precedents, and yet sustain a recovery upon legal principles clearly applicable to the new state of facts, although there was no direct precedent for it, because there had never been an occasion to make one. In remote times, when actions were so carefully classified that a mistake in name was generally fatal to the case, a form of remedy was devised by the courts to cover new wrongs as they might occur, so as to prevent a failure of justice. This was called an ‘action on the case,’ which was employed where the right to sue resulted from the peculiar circumstances of the case, and for which the other forms of action gave no remedy. 26 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 694. For instance, the action for enticing away a man's wife, now well established, was at first earnestly resisted upon the ground that no such action had ever been brought. In an early case the court answered this position by saying: ‘The first general objection is that there is no precedent of any such action as this, and that, therefore, it will not lie; and the objection is founded on Litt. § 108, and Co. Litt. 81b, and several other books. But this generalrule is not applicable to the present case. It would be if there had been no special action on the case before. A special action on the case was introduced for this reason: that the law will never suffer an injury and a damage without a remedy, but there must be new facts in every special action on the case.’ Winsmore v. Greenbank, Willes, 577, 580. As was recently said by this court in an action then without precedent, ‘If the most that can be said is that the case is novel, and is not brought plainly within the limits of some adjudged case, we think such fact not enough to call for a reversal of the judgment.’ Piper v. Hoard, 107 N. Y. 73, 76,13 N. E. 626, 629. The question therefore is not whether there is any precedent for the action, but whether the defendant inflicted such a wrong upon the plaintiff as resulted in lawful damages. The defendant by deceit induced the plaintiff to enter into a marriage contract, whereby he assumed certain obligations, and became entitled to certain rights. Among the obligations assumed was the duty of supporting his wife in sickness and in health, and he discharged this obligation by expending money to fit up rooms for housekeeping, in keeping house with his wife, and caring for her during confinement, when she bore a child, not to him, but to the defendant. Among the rights acquired was the right to his wife's services, companionship, and society. By the fraudulent conduct of the defendant, he was not only compelled to expend money to support a woman whom he would not otherwise have married, but was also deprived of her services while she was in childbed. He thus sustained actual damages to some extent; and as the wrong involved not only malice, but moral turpitude also, in accordance with the analogies of the law upon the subject the jury had the right to make the damages exemplary. By thus applying wellsettled principles upon which somewhat similar actions are founded, this action can be sustained, because there was a wrongful act in the fraud, that was followed by lawful damages, in the loss of money and services. The fact that the corruption of the plaintiff's wife was before he married her does not affect the right of action, as the wrong done to him was not by her defilement, but by the representation of the defendant that she was pure when he knew that she was impure, in order to bring about the marriage. It is difficult to see why a fraud which, if practiced with...

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  • Greene v. Keithley, 10558.
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)
    • November 10, 1936
    ...Luikart v. Miller (Mo. Sup.) 48 S.W.(2d) 867; Jones v. West Side Buick Auto Co. (Mo.App.) 93 S.W. (2d) 1083. New York: Kujek v. Goldman, 150 N.Y. 176, 44 N.E. 773, 34 L.R. A. 156, 55 Am.St.Rep. 670. North Dakota: Harmening v. Howland, 25 N.D. 38, 141 N.W. 131. Ohio: Peckham Iron Co. v. Harp......
  • Spindel v. Spindel
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 2nd Circuit. United States District Court (Eastern District of New York)
    • April 11, 1968
    ......See, e. g., Leventhal v. Lieberman, 262 N.Y. 209, 186 N.E. 675, 88 A.L.R. 782 (1933) (action by divorcee against former in-laws); Kujek v. Goldman, 150 N.Y. 176, 44 N.E. 773, 34 L.R. A. 156 (1896) (action against third party for inducing marriage); Damages for Fraud Inducing Marriage ......
  • Tew v. Chase Manhattan Bank, NA, 88-6728-CIV-JAG.
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 11th Circuit. United States District Courts. 11th Circuit. Southern District of Florida
    • January 22, 1990
    ...governmental authorities. The common law allows for the imposition of a new duty given the demands of our society. See Kujek v. Goldman, 150 N.Y. 176, 44 N.E. 773 (1896) (fraud claim). The notion of a duty is that the law attaches certain consequences to conduct regardless of the parties ex......
  • Leimkuehler v. Wessendorf
    • United States
    • United States State Supreme Court of Missouri
    • June 7, 1929
    ...... on the case, by stating the facts, as the statute requires. Sec. 1220, R. S. 1919; 20 Cyc. 86-90; 6 Cyc. 689; Kujek. v. Goldman, 150 N.Y. 176; Cole v. High, 173 Pa. St. 590; Benjamin v. Mattler, 3 Colo.App. 231. It. therefore makes no difference whether ......
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