Hightower v. Henry

• Decision Date: 23 January 1905
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: JEFFERSON D. HIGHTOWER ET AL. v. WILLIAM E. HENRY

37 So. 745

85 Miss. 476

JEFFERSON D. HIGHTOWER ET AL. v. WILLIAM E. HENRY

Supreme Court of Mississippi

January 23, 1905

November 1904

FROM the circuit court of, first district, Bolivar county, HON. A MCC. KIMBROUGH, Judge.

Henry the appellee, was the plaintiff, and Hightower and another appellants, were defendants in the court below. From a judgment in plaintiff's favor the defendants appealed to the supreme court.

Defendants as landlords, sued out an attachment for rent, and caused the same to be levied upon plaintiff's, the tenant's, cotton. This suit, an action of replevin for the cotton, was then begun by the plaintiff, Henry. The defendants, Hightower and another, appellants, pleaded an avowry, that the cotton was rightfully seized for rent due to them and in arrear from their tenant, Henry, the appellee. To this avowry the appellee, Henry, replied, setting up that no rent was due by reason of the failure of the defendants, the landlords, to comply with their contract and build a good and sufficient fence for the protection of crops upon, and the exclusion of cattle and other live stock from, the leased premises, and that thereby the plaintiff had been damaged in a sum greater than the amount claimed for rent by the defendants. This replication was traversed by the defendants, and upon the issue thus presented the case was tried. The opinion of the court contains a further statement of the facts upon which the decision was based.

Judgment reversed and case remanded.

Charles Scott, Woods & Scott, and Frank Johnston, for appellants.

The evidence of the verbal contract of lease is incompetent and inadmissible. 2 Parsons on Contracts (5th ed.), 548; Bishop on Contracts, 128; Young v. Jacoway, 9 Smed. & M., 212; Brantley v. Carter, 4 Cush., 282; Lumber Co. v. Lumber Co., 71 Miss. 944; Herndon v. Henderson, 41 Miss. 584; Cocke v. Bailey, 42 Miss. 81; Kerr v. Kuykendall, 44 Miss. 137; Wren v. Hoffman, 41 Miss. 616; Baum v. Lynn, 72 Miss. 936; Thompson v. Bryant, 75 Miss. 15; Coats v. Bacon, 77 Miss. 320.

The instrument under consideration specifies the rent reserved, the property leased, the term of the lease, and the time for the payment of the rent. It thus stands as a complete and explicit contract of lease.

It is true that the tenant alone signed the instrument, but this is a wholly immaterial consideration for two conclusive reasons: First, the acceptance of this written contract, which contained the recital that there was a leasing of the property specified for a year, bound the landlords by its terms; and in the second place, it stands as an executed contract so far as the landlords are concerned.

The court below should have granted the peremptory instruction for the defendants.

As a proposition of law the plaintiff was not entitled to any recovery on his claim for damages without satisfactory evidence showing the amount of damage to his crop that was done by the cattle that got into his field through the negligence of the landlords. This was not done, and there was no effort whatever made by the plaintiff to separate or distinguish the damage that was caused by his own acts and negligence.

Sillers & Owen, for appellee.

Farmers and men not versed in the rules of business dealings are not held to the same strict methods that business men are. An account stated will bind a merchant or a lawyer within a time and under circumstances that will not bind a farmer or laborer or other persons ignorant of the usages of business. The courts have felt it necessary to relax the rules of strict constructions when dealing with the unlearned class. Anding v. Levy, 57...