Barker v. Lewis Storage & Transfer Co.

• Decision Date: 18 December 1906
• Citation: 65 A. 143,79 Conn. 342
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: BARKER et ux. v. LEWIS STORAGE & TRANSFER CO.

65 A. 143

79 Conn. 342

BARKER et ux.

v. LEWIS STORAGE & TRANSFER CO.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Dec. 18, 1906.

Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, New Haven County; Jacob B. Ullman, Judge.

Action by David O. Barker and wife against the Lewis Storage & Transfer Company. From a judgment in favor of plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Robert L. Munger, for appellant George E. Beers and Carl A. Mears, for appellees.

PRENTICE, J. This action, to recover damages for the alleged conversion of certain household goods left on storage with the defendant as warehouseman, has once already been before this court, when a new trial was awarded. 78 Conn. 198, 61 Atl. 363. Upon the retrial, it having appeared, as the defendant claimed, that some of the property in controversy belonged to the plaintiff husband in his own right and some to the plaintiff wife in some right, and that the plaintiffs were married between 1849 and 1877, the defendant presented a number of elaborately drawn requests to charge the jury upon a variety of matters covering the field of the ownership of personal property by husband and wife intermarried during the period stated and their rights to legal redress for the conversion of such property, all leading up to the general propositions that it was the duty of the plaintiffs to establish such a title as would warrant a judgment either in their joint names or in the individual name of one of them for such portion of the property described in the complaint as might be shown to belong to him or her; that this duty involved, as a condition of recovery, the particularization of the items belonging to each ownership and their value; and that, if it should appear that one portion of the property belonged to the husband in his own right and another portion to the wife either as her sole and separate estate or as her estate vesting in her husband as trustee, the defendant was entitled to a verdict. Upon the trial the defendant offered evidence to show that the goods were received by it under a special verbal contract or arrangement which restricted its duty and limited its liability. All such evidence was excluded. Two requests to charge also dealt with this aspect of the case, the court having been asked to instruct the jury, in effect, that, if certain assumed facts should be found, a different liability would be imposed upon the defendant than that which the law Imposes upon warehousemen. The court refused to give such instructions. The action of the court in these matters is made the subject of a number of reasons of appeal.

The plaintiffs, who are nowhere in the writ or pleadings described as husband and wife, alleged in their complaint, and the answer admitted, that the defendant was a warehouseman carrying on business in New Haven. They further alleged that they, being the owners thereof, delivered to the defendant as such warehousman for storage the property in question. The answer in terms admitted this allegation, omitting therefrom the words "being the owners thereof." No special contract or arrangement was set up in the answer. The defendant thus stood upon the pleadings as admitting that it, in the capacity of warehouseman, was the Bailee of the property and that the plaintiffs were the joint bailors thereof. This admission involved an admission of the plaintiffs' right to a joint recovery in their action upon proof of the alleged conversion. It is a familiar principle that a bailor may sue his bailee for the latter's conversion of the thing bailed. 5 Cyc. 214, and cases cited. The present right of possession at the time of conversion is sufficient to support an action of trover. Ashmead v. Kellogg, 23 Conn. 76. Ownership was therefore, unnecessary to be alleged and as unnecessary to be proved. As bailee the defendant was estopped from denying the title of its bailors, no paramount title having intervened. Bigelow on Estoppel, 385, note; The Idaho, 93 U.S. 575, 23 L. Ed. 978. The admission of a joint delivery by the plaintiffs carried with it the estoppel against a denial of the corresponding joint title and a concession of a joint right of action if any there was. The admissions of the answer, as they were unaccompanied by any averment of a special agreement or arrangement limiting the obligation which the defendant prima facie assumed as a confessed...