Grider v. Dent

• Decision Date: 31 March 1856
• Citation: 22 Mo. 490
• Parties: GRIDER, Respondent, v. DENT, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

22 Mo. 490

GRIDER, Respondent,

v.DENT, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1856.

1. In a suit by a father for the seduction of his daughter, the defendant will not be permitted to prove that the plaintiff had cast imputations upon the virtue of his own mother by giving evidence in a former judicial proceeding that she had had an illegitimate child before her marriage with plaintiff's father.

Appeal from St. François Circuit Court.

This was an action brought by Thomas Grider against Cyrus Dent, to recover compensation for the seduction by defendant of Susan Grider, daughter of plaintiff. There was a verdict for plaintiff, and the damages were assessed at the sum of $2000, and judgment given for that sum.

During the progress of the trial, the defendant offered to prove that the plaintiff, Thomas Grider, in defence of a petition for a partition of the slaves and real estate belonging to the estate of Christopher Grider, deceased, (father of plaintiff in this suit,) had offered testimony to prove that Polly Cartee, one of the petitioners in the partition suit, was not a daughter of Christopher Grider, deceased, but an illegitimate daughter of the wife of said Christopher, (the mother of Thomas Grider, plaintiff,) born before her marriage with the said Christopher, and before her acquaintance with him. The court refused to permit such testimony to be given to the jury; and one of the errors assigned is this refusal; another is, that the damages are excessive.

Frissell, for appellant.

1. The action is founded upon the pretence that the father has lost the services of his daughter in consequence of the wrongful act of the seducer; but the gist of the action is the disgrace and anguish the father and family are supposed to suffer on account of the act of his child and her seducer. If the father is not disgraced, if his precedent acts show that he has suffered little or no anguish on account of the subject of the suit, why may not his actions, which show the estimation he holds the reputation of his own mother for virtue, be given in evidence in mitigation of damages? The evidence offered and excluded would, at all events, tend to prove that, for the sake of excluding one of the heirs of his father's estate from her distributive share, he was willing to bring up a transaction half a century old, to the disgrace of the memory of his mother, and which was unknown or forgotten by the present generation. After such an act on his part, he could hardly be supposed to have been disgraced by the false step of his daughter, nor could he reasonably be supposed to suffer much anguish of mind. (See 2 Greenl. Ev. 476.)

D. E. Perryman, for respondent.

RYLAND, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

The only question here is, as to the ruling of the court below in refusing to permit the defendant to prove that the plaintiff had previously, in a judicial proceeding, given evidence that his own mother had given birth to a child before her marriage. The Circuit Court would not permit the proof to be given by defendant, and he brings the...