Fowles v. Allen

• Decision Date: 29 May 1894
• Citation: 64 Conn. 350,30 A. 144
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: FOWLES et ux. v. ALLEN.

30 A. 144

64 Conn. 350

FOWLES et ux.

v. ALLEN.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

May 29, 1894.

Appeal from court of common pleas, Hartford county; Walsh, Judge.

Action by Alexander Fowles and wife against Everett B. Allen for damages for cutting and carrying away wood. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant appeals, and alleges error in the exclusion of a letter offered on the question of damages. Affirmed.

Charles H. Briscoe and George B. Fowler, for appellant.

J. Warren Johnson, for appellees.

BALDWIN, J. There was evidence before the jury that the plaintiffs' attorney had been authorized by them to settle their claim, and that they had referred the defendant to him for that purpose. The letter of the attorney was therefore admissible, if one of a similar tenor from them would have been. The defendant had refused to pay for the wood before the attorney was retained, and had afterwards offered to settle, in conversation both with the plaintiffs and with him. It was in the course of these negotiations that the letter was written. It does not purport to state the quantity or value of the wood taken, but only that the survey had been made, and that a settlement could now be effected by paying the writer $10 for the wood and $5 for his services. The latter sum was certainly, in the eye of the law, no part of the damages sustained by the plaintiffs, and the former is not declared to be the amount of their loss. The letter was a mere offer to accept $15 in satisfaction of the plaintiffs' demand, and as such was properly excluded as an offer of compromise. Stianahan v. East Haddam, 11 Conn. 507, 513; Broschart v. Tuttle, 59 Conn. 1, 23, 21 Atl. 925. The question is a very different one from that which would have been presented had the letter stated that the wood in question was worth only $10. Howard Ins. Co. v. Hope Mut. Ins. Co., 22 Conn. 394, 403; Loomis v. Railroad Co., 159 Mass. 39, 34 N. E. 82. There is no error in the judgment appealed from. The other judges concurred.