Logan v. Caffrey

• Decision Date: 01 January 1858
• Citation: 30 Pa. 196
• Parties: Logan versus Caffrey.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

30 Pa. 196

Logan versus Caffrey.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Philadelphia.

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E. M. Paxson, for plaintiff in error.—The cause of action was entire. It was upon one contract of hiring. If more than one suit can be brought upon it, then, by analogy, a separate suit could be maintained for each day's work. The cases of Hess v. Heeble, 6 S. & R. 57; Sterner v. Gower, 3 W. & S. 136; and Croft v. Steele, 6 Watts 373, merely decide that where there are different counts for separate and distinct causes of action, and the record of the former suit shows that a part of the claim only was passed upon by the jury, a subsequent suit can be maintained for the residue; but when the claim is indivisible and in solido, the case is different: Farrington v. Payne, 15 Johns. 432; Smith v. Jones, Ibid. 229.

Brightly, for defendant in error.—In the original cause brought in the District Court, a bill of particulars was furnished to the defendant, exhibiting three several and distinct claims: 1. For work performed between 10th July 1854 and 16th September 1854, at $1.12½ per day. 2. For work performed between 7th November 1854 and 5th November 1855, at $1 per day (which is the claim now in controversy). 3. For work performed from April 1855 to November 1855, at $1 and $1.50 per day.

The bill of particulars shows that the three several claims of the plaintiff were entirely distinct matters, and there was nothing in the evidence to indicate that all the work performed for the defendant was done under the same contract; there was nothing therefore from which the jury could find such a fact, and consequently no error in the learned judge declining so to charge.

If the contract was not entire, and there was no evidence that it was so, the judgment in the District Court was no bar to the present claim: Hess v. Heeble, 6 S. & R. 429; Wilson v. Hamilton, 9 S. & R. 429; Croft v. Steele, 6 Watts 375; Sterner v. Gower, 3 W. & S. 143; Kane v. Fisher, 2 Watts 246; Carmony v. Hoober, 5 Barr 308.^(a)

The opinion of the court was delivered by WOODWARD, J.

It must be assumed that the jury would have found, if permitted to pass upon the question, that the work and labour sued for in this action, and the work and labour for which a recovery was had in the former suit between the same parties, in the District Court, were done and performed under the same contract with the defendant; for such was the tenor of the point in which the court was called on to say that the former suit was a bar to this action. The court declined to affirm the point, and thus withheld the question of fact from the jury.

The first answer to the error assigned upon this ruling is, that there was no evidence on which to submit the question of fact; but this is not a well considered answer. There was the bill of discovery and answer thereto filed in the former case, setting forth the contract under which all of the plaintiff's labour had been performed; and the testimony of Hickey that the plaintiff was at work for defendant prior to November 1854 and after February 1855, that he was there altogether two or three years, worked pretty steadily except on rainy days, and that his wages were $1 per day; and the evidence of John Leo that the wages paid by Mr. Logan were $1 per day winter and summer.

Now, without adverting to all the evidence, here was enough to justify the counsel in submitting the point they did; and had the evidence been referred to the jury, they might well have found that the labour sued for in the two actions was rendered upon one and the same contract.

I repeat, that on a writ of error, we are bound to presume that the fact would have been so found.

The question of law then is, would that fact so found have made the former record a bar to the plaintiff's recovery in this action?

I do not think the identity of the contract in the two actions would necessarily have this effect; for two or more actions between the same parties may be maintained on the same contract, as on a bond for a sum of money payable in instalments: Sterner v. Gower, 3 W. & S. 143. And hence it was not error to disaffirm the first point in the precise phraseology in which it was expressed.

But in the second point the court was called on in general terms to declare the former judgment a bar to this action, which they declined to do.

This involved the question not only of the identity, but of the entirety of the contract in the two actions. If the former judgment was on the same contract and that an entire and indivisible one, it would have been, as a plea, an estoppel of the plaintiff, and was, as evidence under the general issue, a conclusive bar against his action. A party can have no second action on such a contract, not even on clear proof that no evidence was given as to part of the demand in controversy: Hess v. Heeble, 6 S. & R. 57; Carvill v. Garrigues, 5 Barr 152; Brockway v. Kinney, 2 Johns. 210; Miller v. Manice, 6 Hill 122. The language of Chancellor WALWORTH, in the last cited case, was: "If the same question was submitted to the jury in the first action, and the evidence in the last suit, if it had been given in the first action, would have been equally available as in the last to entitle the plaintiff to recover under the state of the pleadings in both, then the verdict and judgment in the first action, provided the defence is brought before the court in the second suit in proper form, is an absolute bar to any...