Jones v. Simonson

• Decision Date: 08 March 1974
• Docket Number: No. 5941,5941
• Citation: 292 So.2d 251
• Parties: Waddy June JONES v. Roger N. SIMONSON.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 251

292 So.2d 251

Waddy June JONES v. Roger N. SIMONSON.

No. 5941.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.

March 8, 1974.

John D. Ponder, Charles L. Duke (Ponder, Duke & Richardson), Metairie, for plaintiff-appellee.

Charles C. Garretson (Nelson, Nelson, Garretson, Lombard & Rothschild), New Orleans, for defendant-appellant.

Before REDMANN and STOULIG, JJ., and FLEMING, J. Pro Tem.

REDMANN, Judge.

A landlord appeals from a $300 damage judgment. He had caused the arrest of plaintiff at her place of employment and her subsequent detention in jail for three hours. By answer to the appeal plaintiff asks damages be increased to $1,000, the maximum jurisdictional amount of the trial court, the First City Court of New Orleans (Const. art. 7, § 51, subd. B).

Defendant leased an apartment to one Pamela Abrams, by a written agreement which named plaintiff as an additional occupant but was signed by Abrams alone as lessee. The agreement named Abrams' mother as the person to be notified in an emergency. The apartment was unfurnished, but defendant did provide an oriental rug worth $300, some lamps of minor value and some pots and pans. At a time when plaintiff had been away several days because of illness, Abrams elected to remove from the premises. She took with her not only her own furniture but also a piano and bed belonging to plaintiff and the rug (and, according to defendant, the lamps) belonging to defendant.

On a Saturday plaintiff became aware of Abrams' move. Plaintiff went to the apartment intending to resume occupancy and found the furniture gone. She therefore removed her clothing etc. to her mother's home.

On the next day, Sunday, defendant was advised by a relative (who lived with defendant in the same building as the rental apartment) that the drapes were down and then, after defendant's order to enter the apartment, that all the furniture was gone, including defendant's rug. Defendant instructed his relative to call the police, and was subsequently visited by the police at his place of work.

Also on Sunday (whether before or after calling the police is not shown), defendant called Abrams' mother, who asserted ignorance both of the rug and of her daughter's whereabouts. Plaintiff (at her mother's home) received a call from Abrams advising she had plaintiff's piano and bed and also had defendant's rug. According to plaintiff, plaintiff insisted she would not again speak with Abrams if Abrams did not call defendant and return the rug.

Abrams did call defendant Sunday. (Defendant testified that during the conversation he told Abrams 'the police have been called and this has been reported missing.' It is not clear whether the police had already visited defendant and the warrants for arrest had been issued at this time.) According to defendant, Abrams' call advised she had taken the rug to clean because she had soiled it, but, defendant testified, she 'kept changing her story' as to whether she was going to take the rug to a cleaner or had already taken it. Yet, though Abrams told him she was no longer employed, defendant did not ask her for her new home address: 'I thought she would lie anyway. * * * And I was not going to go to her apartment anyway. Because the last time I was--saw peopel around the apartment there were quite a few big guys that I wasn't sure that I could--I didn't want to approach them about this carpet. I wanted to do it through regular channels. She should have brought it back to me. And I didn't want to approach her wherever she was living.'

Thus instead of pursuing his tenant who admitted she had taken the rug, defendant elected to pursue the other occupant Because he could find her at work. And on the next day, Monday, defendant verified with plaintiff's employer that she was at work and called the police to meet him there. Plaintiff's supervisor testified that defendant created a disturbance in the place of employment. The supervisor testified defendant 'insisted that June had taken his oriental rug. And after I had spoken with him a little logner, he told me that June and Pam had rented an apartment from him and that the rug was missing. He knew that June had not taken it. But he didn't know where Pam was and he knew where June was. So he came and got June.'

Plaintiff was publicly accused by defendant of theft ('You took my rug') at her crowded place of employment and was arrested at 1:15 p.m., taken to jail, booked with theft of property valued at $500, fingerprinted and jailed. Because the arresting police officers interested themselves in plaintiff's plight, the charge was promptly nolle prosequied by the district attorney's office and plaintiff was released about 4:30 or 5 p.m.

Defendant himself attempted to assist plaintiff but could not immediately locate his lawyer. Defendant also sought to avoid the arrest of plaintiff But only, as he testified four times, 'if the girl can tell me where the rug is and I can get my property back, that's all that I am interested in.'

Liability

Louisiana's basic tort law is C.C. art. 2315's provision that 'Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it.' Categorizations of tort, such as defamation, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, typically derived from the common law's case-by-case genesis of right and relief, may sometimes impede rather than effectuate the civil law's basic principle of liabiity for damages caused by fault. See Comment, Tortious Liability for False Imprisonment in Louisiana, 1942, 17 Tulane L.Rev. 81 (which nevertheless recommends 'false imprisonment' and 'malicious prosecution' as uniform terms).

Great caution is necessarily demanded in determining 'fault' in the context of society's efforts to suppress crime. Our Civil Code does not intend, and society could...