Lowell v. Boston Storage Warehouse Co.

• Decision Date: 14 September 1932
• Citation: 280 Mass. 234,182 N.E. 341
• Parties: LOWELL v. BOSTON STORAGE WAREHOUSE CO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

280 Mass. 234

182 N.E. 341

LOWELL

v.BOSTON STORAGE WAREHOUSE CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Sept. 14, 1932.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Suffolk County; Louis S. Cox, Judge.

Action by Frances C. Lowell against the Boston Storage Warehouse Company. Verdict for plaintiff, and defendant brings exceptions.

Exceptions overruled.

P. A. Northrup, of Boston, for plaintiff.

W. T. Snow, of Boston, for defendant.

WAIT, J.

The question presented by this bill of exceptions is whether there was error in refusing to direct a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiff sued the defendant, keeper of a public warehouse, for rugs delivered to it and not redelivered on demand. The defendant denied that it ever received the rugs.

There was evidence that the plaintiff had goods in storage with the defendant from May, 1924; and, in January, 1926, decided to break up housekeeping and to store other articles with it. She testified that she employed one McCabe, a truckman, to take these articles and deliver them to the defendant; and that on January 2, 1926, McCabe came to her apartment and took away a barrel of china, a wardrobe suitcase, a screen and the rugs, describing them as a ‘bundle of rugs.’ The rugs, five in number in sizes varying from eight feet by seven to about four feet by three, had been wrapped by her about a rug pole some eight feet long and then done up in paper. No receipt or writing was received by the plaintiff at this time from the defendant. The defendant introduced evidence that it had a record of receipt from McCabe on January 2, 1926, for the plaintiff's account, of ‘1 barrel, two trunks, 1 carton, 1 bundle, 1 screen.’ The witness testified that ‘the bundle was not a bundle of rugs because it would have been described as a bundle of rugs if it had been.’ McCable, called as a witness for the plaintiff, testified that he called at her apartment on January 2, 1926, where she gave him some furnishings with instructions to take them to the defendant's warehouse.

‘Q. ‘Did you take all the furniture she gave you, and furnishings?’ A. ‘I took everything that she set aside.’

‘Q. ‘And what did you do with it?’ A. ‘I brought them to the storehouse.’

‘Q. ‘All of them?’ A. ‘Yes.”

He further testified, on cross-examination, that the plaintiff gave him no rugs in January, 1926; that he had carried bundles of rugs hundreds of times and knew there was no such bundle as described by the plaintiff in what he took to the warehouse, and that, because of the extreme narrowness of the stairs and corners, it would have been impossible for him to have carried the rugs described by himself down the stairway of the apartment. On redirect examination he testified that the only things he took to the warehouse were a trunk, a barrel, a screen, and a number of small, little bundles. Employees of the defendant testified to going to the plaintiff's room in the warehouse with her, where they had never seen the bundle of rugs in question; and that the plaintiff at such times had never made any claim that the rugs were missing. In November of 1928 the plaintiff, resuming housekeeping, employed McCabe to get her goods from the warehouse. The bundle of rugs was not among the goods he brought. She had paid the storage charges.

The trial judge was right in refusing to direct a...