Mayo v. Halley
| Decision Date | 13 July 1904 |
| Citation | 100 N.W. 529,124 Iowa 675 |
| Parties | CHAS. MAYO v. GEO. HALLEY, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Story District Court.--HON. J. H. RICHARD, Judge.
ACTION for services rendered and material furnished under two different accounts, and for damages done to plaintiff's crops by defendant's animals; the total of plaintiff's claims being $ 521.85, with a credit for house rent and cow pasture of $ 238.50, leaving the balance claimed to be due from defendant to plaintiff $ 283.35. Defendant denied plaintiff's claim in toto, and interposed six separate counterclaims, in the total amount of $ 1,633. In the answers to special interrogatories, the jury fixed the amount which plaintiff was entitled to recover on his three counts at $ 491.38, and the amount to be allowed defendant on his various counterclaims at $ 45, and they rendered a general verdict for plaintiff against defendant in the sum of $ 134.38. Judgment was entered against defendant in favor of plaintiff for the amount fixed in the general verdict, and the defendant appeals.
Affirmed.
J. F Martin and B. B. Welty, for appellant.
D. J Vinje, for appellee.
Counsel for appellee has filed an amendment to appellant's abstract, but has not favored us with any argument, and we have been compelled to examine the abstract and the amendment thereto with considerable labor, to discover matters which could easily have been called to our attention by counsel. The case is complicated, because it involves conflicting testimony about a great number of small items of account, and claims for damages to crops, which, in the very nature of things, are always difficult to establish by satisfactory evidence. We have carefully gone over the entire case, but shall refer only to such of the questions discussed by counsel for appellant as seem to be of sufficient importance to require notice. It will be impossible, without extending the opinion to unreasonable length, to discuss every question made in the argument on the thirty-four assignments of error. Counsel for appellant has exonerated the trial judge and the jury from any intentional wrongdoing, in reaching what he believes to be an unjust judgment, attributing such result to the complicated mass of details which were presented by the evidence on the trial.
Counsel for appellant attributes the unfortunate result of the trial so far as his client is concerned, to the action of the trial judge in overruling a motion to transfer the case to the equity docket, on the ground that the multiplicity of plaintiff's claims and causes of action and defendant's counterclaims rendered it impossible to fairly present the case to a jury, and this complaint is reiterated in various paragraphs throughout his argument. It is to be confessed that there is some force in the contention that the case was not one easily triable to a jury. If the action had been for balance due on mutual account of charges and credits, it perhaps should have been tried in equity, under the authority of Burt v. Harrah, 65 Iowa 643, 22 N.W. 910, and Blair Town Lot & Land Co. v. Walker, 50 Iowa 376. But the items for which plaintiff seeks to recover are simply items of charges for services rendered and expenses incurred and damages suffered, while the various counterclaims relate also to specific claims by defendant against plaintiff for damages by way of tort or breach of contract; and there seems to be no sufficient reason why each of the particular claims and defenses to which the testimony of the witnesses relates is not proper for the consideration of a jury. We do not understand that the fact that many separate items of claim are presented in one action necessitates the transfer of the action to the equity docket. Galusha v. Wendt, 114 Iowa 597, 616, 87 N.W. 512. We are not prepared to say that, had the trial court transferred the case, and submitted it to a referee, we would have held such action to be erroneous. But we are not inclined to the conclusion that the submission of the case to a jury constituted error requiring a reversal, and we are the more inclined to sustain the action of the trial court because, if the case had been tried in equity, either by the judge for himself, or with the assistance of a referee, the whole mass of evidence would have been dumped into this court, without any possibility of assistance from the findings of the trial judge or referee as to the conclusions of fact established by the evidence. So long as this court is required to try equity cases de novo, without possibility of assistance from the trial judge or a referee, it will be inclined to favor the trial of cases in the lower court at law, rather than in equity. The jurors were probably just as able to unravel the intricacies of the evidence submitted with reference to the various claims and counterclaims as the judges of this court would have been, had the case been tried in equity, and appealed for determination here de novo.
Error is assigned on the action of the trial court in entering up judgment in favor of the plaintiff notwithstanding an assignment made pending the trial of plaintiff's claim to his attorney. The thought of counsel seems to be that after the assignment the case should have been prosecuted in the name of the attorney as substituted plaintiff. But...
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