Kurdle v. Brookmeyer
| Decision Date | 09 April 1937 |
| Docket Number | 32. |
| Citation | 191 A. 416,172 Md. 246 |
| Parties | KURDLE ET UX. v. BROOKMEYER. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Baltimore City Court; J. Frank Supplee, Jr., Judge.
Action by Laverne Brookmeyer against Joseph Kurdle and his wife. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal.
Reversed without a new trial.
Argued before BOND, C.J. and URNER, OFFUTT, PARKE, SLOAN, MITCHELL SHEHAN, and JOHNSON, JJ.
John Holt Richardson and Charles D. Allman, Jr., both of Baltimore, for appellants.
James C. Burch and L. Wethered Barroll, both of Baltimore (W Albert Menchine, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.
Laverne Brookmeyer brought suit in the Baltimore city court against Joseph Kurdle and Nan Kurdle, his wife's parents, to recover damages allegedly sustained by him as a result of the alienation by defendants of the affections of the plaintiff's wife, and from a judgment obtained by him the wife's parents prosecute this appeal.
During the course of the trial, appellants reserved three exceptions to the rulings of the trial court, the first two of which relate to admissibility of testimony, while the third concerns the prayers.
Much of the testimony is undisputed. Brookmeyer and Mary Kathryn Kurdle, daughter of appellants, became acquainted in 1934. He visited their home frequently, and on May 6, 1935, they drove to Washington, D. C., obtained a marriage license and were married by Rev. Allan Poore. At that time Brookmeyer was 21 years old, while his wife was 18. He testified that the marriage had first been discussed between them a week previously, and that after the ceremony they had lunch with Dr. Felipe Martinez, whose wife was a sister to Mary Kathryn that it was the plan of himself and his wife to keep their marriage a secret, and they returned to Baltimore and went to their respective homes. However, on the following Wednesday, Brookmeyer learned that their marriage was known, and he and his wife waited up at the Kurdle home for the return of Mr. and Mrs. Kurdle, in order to tell them of their marriage; that Mrs. Kurdle asked why they had done so, and said she would get the marriage annulled. She sent Mary Kathryn to bed, and Brookmeyer was taken to his home by another of the Kurdle daughters and her friend. Since that date, he testified he had not seen his wife, but had once talked with her over the telephone; that she then informed him that she was going to have the marriage annulled and refused to talk further with him. He stated she also told him that a Mr. Clark and Mr. Kurdle (one of appellants) were going to see him in reference to the annulment; that he later talked with Mr. Kurdle and requested him to leave the marriage as it was, let them live apart, and, if he got a job or was earning a suitable salary to take care of a wife, to let them assume the marital status; that Mr. Kurdle stated that this was a matter which concerned more than one member of the family, and he would have to talk it over with the others; that on Friday evening following he saw Mr. Kurdle and Mr. Clark together, and was then told by Kurdle that Clark would go to Washington with Brookmeyer and they would hire a lawyer to represent him so that he would not have to appear in court.
On the day following the marriage, Mrs. Brookmeyer went to live with her sister in Washington, D. C., and has not since that time lived at the home of her parents. During May, 1935, but after the marriage of the parties, the wife wrote her husband five letters. In the first of these she informed him she had been to see a lawyer in regard to "getting the annulment;" that the lawyer was going to Baltimore to see the husband concerning it, and, if he protested, she would never see him again. In that letter she further stated:
In another letter dated May 15 she wrote,
In the third letter she criticized the husband severely for attempting to have the lawyer who had previously represented him in the annulment proceedings withdraw therefrom. She was still determined to have her marriage annulled, if possible, for she then wrote, The fourth letter is relatively unimportant, while in the fifth she stated she was sorry that things had to turn out in such a way, otherwise she would never have done what she did. While in some of those letters the wife expressed affection for her husband, he testified that he had not seen her since they were written, and the record is devoid of any evidence to show that he made an effort to see her, notwithstanding she was living in Washington, D. C., and far removed from any restraints of her parents' home in Baltimore.
During the later part of May, Brookmeyer's wife, by her next friend, Dr. Felipe Martinez, filed a bill of complaint in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia against her husband, in which she sought an annulment of their marriage upon the ground of fraud and duress. Shortly thereafter, Brookmeyer filed an answer under oath to the bill of complaint, in which he admitted many of its allegations and failed to deny the others. When this answer was filed, appellee was represented by Harold Ganss, a member of the district bar, who was introduced to Brookmeyer and Mr. Clark, the latter being a friend of appellants, by Mr. Friedlander, counsel for Brookmeyer's wife in the annulment proceedings. The evidence is also susceptible of a rational inference that Ganss was first employed by Dr. Martinez to represent Brookmeyer. Appellee attempted to testify that Attorney Friedlander, who introduced Ganss to him, was counsel for Mr. and Mrs. Kurdle, but certainly this statement standing alone and with no facts to support it can have no probative force. Furthermore, if he did not originally employ Attorney Ganss to represent him, he did by acceptance of his services ratify the act of Dr. Martinez in securing him, and the evidence of Mr. Clark, who seems to have been equally friendly toward appellee and appellants, is that, when the matter of annulment was first mentioned to Brookmeyer, the latter agreed that such a course was, under all circumstances, wise and proper. Again, on May 17, 1935, shortly before the bill of complaint was filed in the District of Columbia Supreme Court, appellee wrote and mailed the following letter to his wife's father:
"Dear Mr. Kurdle: I am writing you this letter in an effort to retain whatever favorable opinion you had of me previous to the vissitudes of the last few weeks which I have caused you. In rehearsing the occurrences of the last week or two I can readily see that your opinion will be, and unavoidably too, that I have had absolutely no consideration of your family's feelings, and yours particularly, in the matter which I undertook. But such is not the case. Though the facts of the situation do not accentuate any consideration on my part as regards the feelings of the parents of the girl I love, it has in no small wise overtaxed me considerably in an effort to restrain my own personal feelings regarding the matter, as it was not an effort on my part, as the saying goes "to feather my nest with contributions of loving parents." This is a horrible subject and I had hoped that I could remain aloof from it but the culmination of opinions seem to indicate that this was my sole desire. Yet those persons cannot be blamed for such opinions, because of such a disparity in our social and financial status. But is it not a continued fallacy of an unthinking person to put himself in the place of the other in trying to render an opinion in the situation. There is no other way in which such degenerate thinkers are able to make deductions. So there, is not their opinion an indication of the way in which they would act under the same situation, or other than the party involved?
And so it is for various reasons that I have chosen a method of procedure, under the advice of a competent lawyer and friend which will eradicate any lawful claim on my part, now or in the future, on either your daughter or you. I reiterate that this is a horrible subject but in an effort to exonerate myself from such malicious imputations I have...
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