Dunshee v. Standard Oil Co.
| Decision Date | 14 April 1914 |
| Citation | 146 N.W. 830,165 Iowa 625 |
| Parties | F. S. DUNSHEE, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY, Defendant and Appellant, and MILTON STORER, JOHN D. STEWART, LEE EDGINGTON, Defendants and Appellees |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Polk District Court.--HON. LAWRENCE DE GRAFF, Judge.
ACTION to recover damages based upon the charge of conspiracy and unfair trade. From a verdict and judgment against the Standard Oil Company, it appeals.
Affirmed.
Carr Carr & Evans, and Clinton L. Nourse, for appellant Standard Oil Co.
Dunshee & Haines, for appellee Dunshee.
I.
This action is brought by the assignee of the Crystal Oil Company to recover damages for injury to the business of the Crystal Oil Company in consequence of alleged wrongful and illegal acts resulting in unfair and unlawful competition. It is charged that the defendants the Standard Oil Company, Milton Storer, John D. Stewart, and Lee Edgington entered into an unlawful conspiracy for the purpose of doing the illegal acts which were pleaded, and that such conspiracy was fraudulently, maliciously, and unlawfully formed, and that, as a result of it, and the acts done thereunder, the Crystal Oil Company was driven out of business, and its business and property were because of it sacrificed and destroyed. Prayer was made for damages, actual and punitive. Issue was joined, there was a trial to a jury resulting in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff against the Standard Oil Company alone for $ 7,000, and no finding was made by the jury as to the other defendants. The trial court entered judgment on the verdict against the Standard Oil Company, and, construing the failure to find against the other defendants as, in effect, a finding in their favor, judgment was entered dismissing the petition as to each of said defendants, and awarding to them recovery of costs against the plaintiff. The Standard Oil Company appeals from the judgment against it. No appeal is taken from the judgment dismissing the petition as to the other defendants.
This case has once before been in this court (152 Iowa 618), and the review of the testimony then made is in substantial accord with what is shown in the record on this appeal, varying, perhaps, in some features, but not to such an extent as to require that it should again be recited. In the former decision it was held that the evidence was such as to require the submission of the cause to the jury, and that a finding for plaintiff in actual and exemplary damages had support. The reversal of the case was because of a matter not going to the right of action and recovery, save as to the allowance of interest upon exemplary damages, and has no bearing upon the questions raised by this appeal.
II. Many errors are assigned. At the close of the evidence the defendants moved for a directed verdict, which was overruled, and such ruling is challenged as being incorrect. After the appeal and reversal of the case defendants filed an amendment to their answer, setting up new averments as to the conduct of the Crystal Oil Company in the management of its business, not only in its relations to and methods with small dealers in oil, but also with the Standard Oil Company, and that by its actions the latter did nothing which was unfair in competition. The pleading itself but served as the basis of proof. It is now a sufficient answer to the claim of the appellant in this regard that, under the holding on the former appeal, the evidence was such as to require the submission of the cause to the jury. And that liability arises under such a state of facts as the evidence tends to show. See Boggs v. Duncan Schell Company, 143 N.W. 482.
III. It is claimed that there was error in the refusal by the trial court to give to the jury instructions Nos. 14 and 15 requested by the appellant. Instruction No. 14 was to the effect that no evidence had been offered showing or tending to show that the defendant the Standard Oil Company ever authorized the doing of any malicious or wanton act, or that it ever ratified such, if it was found that such was committed by the other defendants, and that, if the jury, under such state of facts, found the plaintiff entitled to recover of the Standard Oil Company some sum as actual damages, there could not be any allowance of exemplary damages. The fifteenth instruction as requested was to the effect that, if the jury found that any one of the defendants did not act maliciously in the transactions complained of, exemplary damages could not, under such a finding, be allowed against any of the defendants. We can properly consider the questions raised by these instructions with other questions arising out of the verdict.
Storer was the manager of the Des Moines branch of the Standard Oil Company at the time the acts were committed which are the basis of the claim in suit. Stewart was the city salesman, and Edgington was in charge of the retail department. All, therefore, were agents of the Standard Oil Company, and it does not appear from the evidence that what was done, and which serves as the basis of the complaint, was by the direction of any other person or persons than the agents named. Whatever acts were committed resulting in injury to plaintiff's assignor were the acts of the agents named, and only by imputing to the principal the malice of the agents, in acts done within the scope of their employment, can punitive liability of the principal arise.
The verdict of the jury was against the Standard Oil Company, alone. No special findings were returned indicating the amount allowed as actual damages, nor the amount, if any, allowed as exemplary damages, both of which were permitted under the instructions of the court. The failure by the jury to return a verdict, in terms, for or against the other defendants was treated by the trial court as a finding for them, and judgment was entered accordingly, from which no appeal has been taken. For the purpose of this case, then, such must be taken as an adjudication that said defendants were guilty of no acts which could serve as the basis of an award of damages against them, either actual or exemplary. It must then be determined what effect such an adjudication has upon the liability of the principal, against whom judgment was entered.
That the master is liable for the consequences of a tort committed by the servant in the course of his duty, and while acting within the scope of his employment, is a rule established by many authorities. Moore v. Fitchburg Ry., 4 Gray 465 (64 Am. Dec. 83); Ramsden v. Boston R. R. Co., 104 Mass. 117 (6 Am. Rep. 200); Bass v. Chicago Ry. Co., 36 Wis. 450 (17 Am. Rep. 495). And when a tort has been committed by an agent within the line of his employment, a joint action may be maintained against the principal and the agent. Hewitt v. Swift, 3 Allen 422; St. Louis, etc., R. R. Co. v. Dalby, 19 Ill. 353. But the principal cannot be held liable in exemplary damages for the wanton acts of the agent, unless it participated, either expressly or impliedly, or by conduct authorizing or approving the act, either before or after it was committed. Lightner Mining Co. v. Lane, 161 Cal. 689 (120 P. 771, Ann Cas. 1913C 1093); Lake Shore & M. S. Ry. v. Prentice, 147 U.S. 101 (13 S.Ct. 261, 37 L.Ed. 97); Haver v. Railroad Co., 64 N.J.L. 312 (45 A. 593); Forhman v. Traction Co., 63 N.J.L. 391 (43 A. 892); Wells v. Railroad Co., 82 Vt. 108 (71 A. 1103, 137 Am. St. Rep. 987).
Recognizing that a corporation is impersonal, that it can act only through its agents, in the application of the foregoing rules there arises the question, in its relation to exemplary damages, as to where one must look as to the source of authority for the performance of the acts charged as a malicious tort. When it appears, as here, giving to the evidence the effect that it tends to show, and from which the jury alone should determine the fact, that the methods employed were with the knowledge of and under the general direction of the agents who were the representatives of their principal and in charge of its business, and that which was done being for the sole purpose of increasing its business, and more nearly controlling the field, we think there was presented such a state of facts as warranted submitting to the jury the question of liability not only for actual but exemplary damages.
As a result of that submission, there was returned the verdict which, as construed by the trial court, in effect exonerated the agents of all liability and wrong; and this fact presents the question raised by requested instruction No. 15, which in effect required a finding of malice against all defendants before exemplary damages could be allowed against any of them.
In Moore v. Duke, 84 Vt. 401 (80 A. 194), cited by appellant, an action for trespass, it is stated that in cases based on tort, if more than one is made defendant, all must be shown to have been moved by a wanton desire to injure, citing Boutwell v. Marr, 71 Vt. 1 (42 A. 607, 43 L. R. A. 803, 76 Am. St. Rep. 746). In the discussion of the question in Moore's case, supra, that court said:
But since exemplary damages are predicated upon the animus of the one against whom they are claimed, it may happen, when two or more are defendants, that some are liable for exemplary damages and others only for compensatory. Some may be acting in good faith, while others . . . maliciously. In such cases while all are liable for the full amount of the actual injury which the plaintiff has suffered from the joint tort, . . . exemplary damages are to be assessed according to the guilt of the most innocent of the defendants. And if any of these was...
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McCarney v. Des Moines Register & Tribune Co.
... ... See Dunshee v. Standard Oil Co., 165 Iowa 625, 633, 146 N.W. 830, 834 (1914); White v. Textbook Co., 150 Iowa 27, 31, 129 N.W. 338, 340 (1911); 19 C.J.S ... ...
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