Burnham v. Collateral Loan Co.
| Decision Date | 17 June 1901 |
| Citation | 60 N.E. 617,179 Mass. 268 |
| Parties | BURNHAM v. COLLATERAL LOAN CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Wm H. Baker and Edward Lowe, for plaintiff.
Elder Wait & Whitman, for defendant.
The defendant's officers, believing that a crime had been committed, sent to the police headquarters for a police inspector. In compliance with the request, Glidden, an inspector, came to the office of the defendant, whose officers stated to him the facts so far as material. There is not evidence which would warrant a finding that they said to him anything which was false, or concealed from him any material fact which was true, or that they directed the officer to begin a prosecution. Everything was left to him. They expected (and so did he) that he would make further investigation; that if, in the end, he determined that the case should be prosecuted, he would act accordingly; and that in all this he would act not as the agent and in behalf of the company, but as a public officer charged with the duty of detecting crime, and of prosecuring according to law those accused of it. It is true that the officer testified 'that he had prosecuted quite a number of cases before for said company,' but the language, taken in connection with the context, cannot be fairly interpreted to mean that he in those cases acted as the agent of the company, or in any way under their direction or influence. The officer, in the end, was to act upon his own judgment in this case. He did act upon it. Therefore the complaint was not made by him as the agent of the company, and the defendant cannot be held upon the ground that it made the complaint. Nor is the connection of the defendant with the case in any way such as to show that it can be held responsible for the decision of the officer. It is true that they gave him information upon which he relied, and by which he may be presumed to have been influenced in his conclusion to prosecute, but that is not of itself sufficient. The principles governing the rights and liabilities of the parties to an action for malicious prosecution are the result of a compromise between the right of the individual to be free from arrest or prosecution upon a charge of which he is innocent, and the right of the community to be protected from crime. And one of these principles is that, if a person discloses fairly and truthfully to the officer whose duty it is to detect crime all maters within his knowledge which, as a man of ordinary intelligence, he is bound to suppose would have a material bearing upon the question of the innocence or guilt of the person suspected, and leaves it to the officer to act entirely upon his own judgment and responsibility as a public officer as to whether or not there shall be a criminal prosecution, and does no more, he cannot be held answerable in an action for malicious prosecution, even if the officer comes to the wrong conclusion, and prosecutes when he ought not to do so. Such a person does no more than his duty; and to hold him...
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