Krol v. Plodick

• Decision Date: 04 May 1915
• Citation: 77 N.H. 557,94 A. 261
• Parties: KROL v. PLODICK.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

94 A. 261

77 N.H. 557

KROL

v. PLODICK.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Hillsborough.

May 4, 1915.

Transferred from Superior Court, Hillsborough County; Chamberlin, Judge.

Action on the case for malicious prosecution by Frank Krol against Edward Plodick. Verdict for plaintiff, and cause transferred from superior court on defendant's exception. Exception overruled. Judgment on verdict.

In August, 1910, the parties engaged in a game of pool in a Manchester poolroom for money. In making change there was some dispute regarding the genuineness of a $2 bill which Krol gave Plodick, and some of the bystanders pronounced it a counterfeit. Thereupon the defendant went to police headquarters and entered a complaint for passing counterfeit money against the plaintiff, who was arrested, tried, and acquitted. The defendant offered evidence to show that after he left the poolroom, and before he visited police headquarters, he learned that a brother of the plaintiff had been arrested for passing counterfeit money. The evidence was excluded, and the defendant excepted.

Branch & Branch, of Manchester, for plaintiff. James A. Broderick, of Manchester, for defendant.

WALKER, J. It is argued by the defendant that the evidence excluded should have been admitted, upon the ground that it was a circumstance which, taken in connection with what occurred in the poolroom, tended to prove that he had probable cause for instituting the prosecution against the plaintiff. If, as the defendant claims, his suspicions were aroused by the talk in the poolroom that the plaintiff had passed to him counterfeit money, it is difficult to understand why they should be confirmed or strengthened by the mere fact that subsequently he was informed that another man had been arrested upon a similar charge. In the absence of evidence showing that both men were in some way associated together and had a common purpose or design to commit the crime of passing counterfeit money, reasonable men could not reach that conclusion. Because A. is charged with the commission of a crime, it is not ordinarily a legitimate deduction that B. is guilty of a like offense. Nor is this self-evident proposition any the less applicable when the additional fact is considered that A. and B. are brothers. The family relationship alone is not sufficient to create in the mind of a reasonably prudent man a rational belief that one is a criminal because the other is. Brainerd v. Brackett, 33 Me. 580; Hyde v. Greuch, 62 Md. 577; Bruce v. Tyler, 127 Ind. 468, 26 N. E. 1081; Holburn v. Neal, 4 Dana (Ky.) 120; Schwartz v. Boswell, 156 Ky. 103, 160 S. W. 748.

To the suggestion that all the circumstances that induced the defendant to charge the plaintiff with the...