Craven v. Bloomingdale

• Decision Date: 10 June 1902
• Citation: 171 N.Y. 439,64 N.E. 169
• Parties: CRAVEN v. BLOOMINGDALE.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

171 N.Y. 439

64 N.E. 169

CRAVEN

v.BLOOMINGDALE.

Court of Appeals of New York.

June 10, 1902.

Appeal from supreme court, appeallate division, First department.

Action by Walter S. Craven against Lyman G. Bloomingdale. From a judgment of the appellate division (66 N. Y. Supp. 525) affirming a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed.

Otto Horwitz, for appellant.

John W. Brainsby, for respondent.

BARTLETT, J.

We are of opinion that the learned trial judge failed to instruct the jury properly as to the law of punitive or vindictive damages. A brief statement of the facts is necessary in order to present the legal question involved. The defendant is the proprietor of a department store in the city of New York, under the firm name of Bloomingdale Bros. In the conduct of the business a large number of wagons owned by defendant are used in delivering goods purchased. The driver of the wagon involved in this action to recover damages for false imprisonment was employed under a written contract which authorized the defendant to charge him for, and deduct from his wages, any money, or the value of any merchandise, which might be lost, damaged, destroyed, or stolen after being placed in his charge. The driver also gave a bond, with surety, under this contract. The plaintiff purchased an article which, on delivery, proved unsatisfactory. It was returned, and another sent in exchange. Full payment had been made on the original purchase, and on the second article a small balance was due defendant. An error was made in defendant's store, by which the driver was required to collect the full price of the article, and not the balance actually due. The driver, on delivering the second article, insisted on full payment, or a return of the property. An altercation ensued between the plaintiff and the driver, and as the latter was denied full payment, or the return of the property, he sent out for a policeman; and the result was that plaintiff was arrested, taken to the police station, and, on a statement of the facts, at once discharged. The matter being brought to defendant's attention, he said he ‘was sorry that such a thing had happened,’ and asked what he could do. The plaintiff demanded the return of his money, and stated he desired to have no further business with the firm. This action was then commenced, and the jury rendered a verdict for $1,250. The appellate division affirmed the judgment entered upon this verdict.

We have here presented the question as to the proper measure of damages in the case of a merchant whose servant, in the delivery of goods, causes the illegal arrest of a customer. The fact that the master was not present when the arrest was made does not necessarily absolve him from liability. If, on the evidence, the jury could find that the master authorized the arrest, or subsequently ratified it, he must respond in damages. In the case before us it is not claimed the master directly authorized the arrest of the plaintiff, or ratified it when brought to his attention. It was, however, a question for the jury to determine, if the evidence warranted it, whether the manner in which the defendant conducted his business, through the intervention of the driver, constituted such a system as to render the act of the driver the act of the master.

After the trial judge had completed his main charge, he took up the plaintiff's requests, and said: ‘I do not think I made it very clear to the jury,-the distinction between compensatory and punitive damages. It is as follows: Damages in an action for false imprisonment, for humiliation, insult, and wounded sensibilities, are regarded in law as compensatory damages. If you find for the plaintiff, when you have reached some sum,-made up your mind; some sum that you think is reasonable and right in the way of compensatory damages,-then you have the power, if you think proper, to add to that some sum by way of punitive or vindictive damages. But your verdict will be an aggregate sum.’ At the close of the charge the defendant's counsel excepted to that portion of it in which the court said that it was within the province of the jury to give punitive or vindictive damages; also where the court said that the jury have the right to add a sum for punitive damages. the defendant's fifth request to charge reads. ‘That if the jury finds in favor of the plaintiff, they may not award punitive damages.’ The court refused to so charge, and an exception was taken.

The learned appellate division placed its affirmance of the judgment of the trial term upon the rule laid down in Lynch v. Railroad Co., 90 N. Y. 77, 43 Am. Rep. 141, which was an action for false imprisonment, and quoted the language of the court in that case as follows: ‘It matters not that he [the servant] exceeded the powers conferred upon him by his principal, and that he did an act which the principal was not authorized to do, so long as he acted in the line of his duty, or, being engaged in the service of the defendant, attempted to perform a duty pertaining, or which he believed to pertain, to that service. He detained the plaintiff at the station, caused his arrest, went with the police officer to the police station, there made a complaint, and then the next morning appeared before the police magistrate and renewed his complaint. These were successive steps taken by the gate keeper to enforce the payment of the fare by the plaintiff, or to punish him for refusing to pay it, and for all that he did the defendant is responsible.’ The appellate division then said: ‘In the case before us the goods were delivered to the driver under such circumstances as authorized him not only to protect the property of the master, but to do what he believed to be his duty to his principal with reference to that property, and we think the case falls directly within the rulings in Lynch v. Railroad Co. The acts of Blaut [the driver] were quite similar to those committed by the servant of the railway company in the case last cited, with an unimportant exception. According to Blaut's own testimony, the arrest was made and the charge preferred in order to get back the merchandise, and the substance of the charge was a theft. It would scarcely be disputed that, if this article had been taken from the wagon while in charge of Blaut, an arrest caused by him of the person taking it would have been an act performed in the course of his duty to his employer for the protection of the employer's property; and the character of the act in this case does not differ materially from that in the case supposed, although Blaut swears that he stated to the plaintiff, ‘I have got to have the stove or the money, because I am responsible for it.’ The legal quality of his act does not depend upon his assertion, but upon his relation to his master. It is quite evident that he believed it to be his duty to cause the arrest, and his master placed him in charge of the merchandise under such circumstances as would authorize an implication of authority to do what was proper or necessary, in the exercise of his judgment, to protect the property intrusted to him.' We are unable to see the similarity between these two cases. The gate keeper in the case cited rested under the duty to collect a ticket before a passenger was allowed to pass out. The passenger claimed that he had lost his ticket, and the gate keeper assumed it to be his duty to detain him and prosecute him under the circumstances. The case at bar presents a very different situation. The driver's remark, ‘I have got to have the stove or the money, because I am responsible for it,’ should be considered by the jury in determining whether the driver acted for the defendant or himself. If the jury are to pass upon the question whether a system existed in defendant's business authorizing this arrest, they must also consider the circumstances under which the driver was employed. He was required to give security on entering his employment, and was personally liable to his employer for the goods intrusted to his care, or the money called for by his list. Undoubtedly, in the case supposed by the appellate division,-of an article taken from the wagon by a thief while passing along the street,-the driver, whether acting in his own behalf or that of his master, would be justified in pursuing the thief and causing his arrest. We are of the opinion that the jury retired without an accurate conception of the rule of damages in actions for false imprisonment. It is undoubtedly the rule that the master is liable in compensatory damages if his manner of conducting business justified the jury in believing that the servant was acting within the scope of his employment, and discharging the ordinary duties imposed upon him.

The case at bar is clearly distinguishable from the recent case of Stevens v. O'Neill, 51 App. Div. 364,64 N. Y. Supp. 663, affirmed in 169 N. Y. 375, 62 N. E. 424. In that case the plaintiff had been arrested in the store of the defendant under circumstances peculiarly distressing and humiliating. Van Brunt, P. J., in writing for the appellate division, said: ‘Although there was no evidence of any express malice against the plaintiff individually, the act was done in pursuance of a system which had been adopted in that store; and, if this system was such as to place an innocent customer in the position in which the plaintiff's evidence showed that she was placed, the jury had the right to say that the results of this system were of such a character as to require rebuke by way of punitive damages, in order that innocent people should not be placed in the position which this plaintiff was placed without any fault on her part.’ The above case, and other cases of like character, involving the conduct of retail stores, disclose a detective system which authorized officers and others in the employ of merchants to subject customers suspected of theft to personal search and other...