Carter v. Hill

• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: CAHILL, J.
• Citation: Carter v. Hill, 81 Mich. 275, 45 N.W. 988 (Mich. 1890)
• Decision Date: 06 June 1890
• Parties: CARTER v. HILL.

45 N.W. 988

81 Mich. 275

CARTER v. HILL.

Supreme Court of Michigan

June 6, 1890

Error to circuit court, Clinton county; JOSEPH P. MOORE, Judge.

Fedewa & Lyon, for plaintiff.

Norton & Brunson, and Spaulding &amp Walbridge, for defendant.

CAHILL J.

The plaintiff brought an action to recover damages from the defendant for the alienation of his wife's affections for criminal intercourse with her, and for enticing her away from home. He recovered a judgment for $800, from which defendant appeals.

Upon the trial the plaintiff was called as a witness on his own behalf, and testified to important facts affecting the main charge against the defendant,-that of adultery with plaintiff's wife. Among other things, he was allowed to testify, against objection, to a conversation had, a short time before his marriage, between himself and the woman whom he afterwards married, in the absence of the defendant, in which she said she would not marry the plaintiff unless he would consent that she should remain at defendant's house while his wife went to Lansing to be doctored, that she told him that defendant wanted her to stay, and that she did stay there two months after their marriage. This testimony was objected to as hearsay, and it was certainly open to that criticism. The purpose of plaintiff's counsel in offering it is well illustrated by the remarks of one of them, made on the trial, in support of his offer to show by plaintiff that he had been engaged to the woman he finally married about a year and a half before his marriage; that his engagement had been broken off, and subsequently renewed, at the request of the woman, a few weeks before the marriage. We extract the following from a somewhat lengthy discussion appearing in the record "Mr. Blanchard. Now, your honor, you see the force and point I am getting at. Why was this proposition coming from her to him? After they had once been engaged,-the engagement broken off for a year and a half,-she again writes to him to come down and see her, and they would renew the engagement. That is where I claim it is relevant. Here is a lady living at Mr. Hill's. She contracts an alliance of matrimony with this man some two years ago, broke it off, and all at once, on her own motion, she proposes to him to come and get married, 'but I must stay here with Mr. Hill two months. Then I will go with you.' Well, he gets married in April; goes to his farm. In October they move from the farm, and during that time a child was born. It is a fair line of inference for the jury to draw, who is the father of that child?"

An examination of the record shows that the case for the plaintiff, aside from his own testimony, was weak. It consisted almost solely of the testimony of one Treadwell a man who claims to have looked through a window of the plaintiff's house one afternoon in August, 1884, "just before dusk," and to have seen a man and woman lying in a compromising position on a lounge in an inner room adjoining the one where the window was; that the man's back was towards him, so that he could not see his face; that the woman was Mrs. Carter; that he had seen Mrs. Carter come up to her house, in a carriage with a man who was a stranger to witness, a few minutes before; that they hitched the team and entered the house, and shortly after he looked in the window; that, after seeing what he had testified to, he retreated into a corn-field near by, and saw Mrs. Carter come out of the house and go to the well. The man soon came out, and stood talking with her. Just then Mr. Carter came up with a milk-pail in his hand, and entered the house. Witness...