Memphis Steam Laundry-Cleaners v. Lindsey

• Decision Date: 20 December 1941
• Docket Number: 34736.
• Citation: 192 Miss. 224,5 So.2d 227
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MEMPHIS STEAM LAUNDRY-CLEANERS, Inc., v. LINDSEY.

5 So.2d 227

192 Miss. 224

MEMPHIS STEAM LAUNDRY-CLEANERS, Inc., v. LINDSEY.

No. 34736.

Supreme Court of Mississippi

December 20, 1941

C R. Bolton, of Tupelo, and Earl King, of Memphis, Tenn., for appellant.

Floyd Cunningham and Jas. A. Cunningham, both of Booneville, for appellee.

McGEHEE Justice.

This is a suit under the common law for damages alleged to have been sustained by the appellee J. B. Lindsey, doing business as Lindsey's Cleaners, because of a campaign of unfair competition conducted by the officers and employees of the appellant corporation, Memphis Steam Laundry-Cleaners, Inc. for the expressed purpose of destroying the appellee's established business of cleaning and pressing men's suits and ladies' dresses within the territory hereinafter mentioned.

The case was submitted to the jury under instructions which permitted the assessment of punitive as well as actual damages, and with the result that a verdict was rendered in favor of the plaintiff Lindsey for the sum of $1,250. From this judgment, the defendant Memphis Steam Laundry-Cleaners Inc., has prosecuted this appeal, and assigns as error (1) the refusal of the court below to grant a peremptory instruction in its favor on the ground that the plaintiff had failed either to establish liability or to prove that any actual damages were sustained by him; (2) the submission to the jury of the question of punitive damages; and (3) the overruling of objections to the admissibility of certain testimony. There was also a plea to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of Prentiss County on the ground that the defendant is a non-resident corporation domiciled at Memphis, Tennessee, with its resident agent for the service of process residing at Tupelo, in Lee County, Mississippi, and that the cause of action did not occur or accrue in Prentiss County where the suit was brought. We think that a statement of the facts in the case will constitute a sufficient response to each of these assignments of error and demonstrate that neither of them are well taken, without the necessity of discussing them separately.

In the year 1939, the appellee Lindsey was engaged in the dry cleaning and pressing business in Booneville, Prentiss County, Mississippi, where his principal place of business was located, and also in the Counties of Lee and Alcorn. His prices for cleaning and pressing men's suits and ladies' dresses were 35¢ in his home County of Prentiss, and 40¢ in the adjoining Counties of Lee and Alcorn. The proof shows that he was making a legitimate profit at these prices, and his growing business afforded him the means of a livelihood for himself and family. At that time, the defendant was doing business in the City of Tupelo and elsewhere in Lee County, and in the Counties of Itawamba, Monroe, Chickasaw, Union, Pontotoc, Prentiss (outside of Booneville), Panola, Tate and Coahoma. Its charges for cleaning and pressing suits and dresses up to the date of January 1940 were 50¢ in Itawamba, Monroe, Prentiss, Tate, Panola and Coahoma, but for this same service it was charging 85¢ in Lee and Union Counties, and 75¢ in Chickasaw County. On January 1, 1940, four other local cleaning and pressing establishments in the City of Tupelo who were charging 85¢ for this service reduced their prices to the approximate level of the price of 40¢ then being charged by the plaintiff. The defendant offered no testimony to the effect that the price of 40¢ was not sufficient to afford a legitimate profit, or that it was not a reasonable price for the customers to pay, nor was there any proof to show that the price of 85¢ charged by the defendant was reasonable. Following the reduction in prices on the part of these four other competitors in the City of Tupelo to the level of the prices being charged by Lindsey, the district manager of the defendant at Tupelo went to the Town of Booneville in company with another employee of the defendant and called upon the plaintiff at his place of business, and told him that Tupelo was in the defendant's territory and that he could not continue to charge only 40¢ for the service, and further stated in substance that unless he would agree to compromise the matter by raising his prices to at least 75¢ that the defendant company intended to break him; that they had a couple of million dollars and would spend the last dollar of it or break him; and that "we are not up here to raise a racket but just come to tell you what you can do." Then, on January 22, 1940, the defendant reduced its prices in Tupelo to 20¢ for cleaning and pressing men's suits and 25¢ for ladies' dresses, and with the result that the gross receipts of the plaintiff's business in Tupelo for the first four months of the year 1940 were reduced to $1,083.90 as compared with $2,711.05 for the four preceding months, and it was shown that ordinarily there was very little change in the volume of the cleaning and pressing business during the first four months of the year as compared with the last four months of the preceding year.

During the course of the said conversation between the district manager of the defendant and the plaintiff at the latter's place of business in January 1940, the plaintiff informed the defendant's manager that he would not raise his prices, that crops in that section had been bad, and the people could not afford to pay the prices that the defendant wanted him to charge. Prior to that time, the defendant had not done business in the Town of Booneville, as heretofore stated, but on the following Monday its employees went to Booneville in trucks and began soliciting business at its reduced prices of 20¢ for cleaning and pressing men's suits and 25¢ for ladies' dresses, advertising such prices in the local newspaper and gave a local telephone number for customers to call for the service, and with the result that the plaintiff sustained a loss in gross receipts at Booneville of $427.10 during the first nine months of the year 1940, as compared with the last nine months of the year 1939, and it was shown that ordinarily there was no material change in the volume of business during one of these periods as compared with the other.

From what is thus shown to have occurred at Booneville in Prentiss County on the occasion of the visit of the defendant's district manager to the office of the plaintiff, and also because of the acts performed at Booneville in furtherance of the plan of the defendant to injure the business of the plaintiff, we are of the opinion that the plea to the jurisdiction of the court was not well taken, the suit not having been brought under any anti-trust law so as to render it necessary that the same be filed in the county where the defendant has a domicile or place of business or its agent may be found, as provided for by Section 3445, Code of 1930.

Due to the fact that the plaintiff kept books to the extent only of showing the volume of the business done and of the collections made, without any record being made of his expenses, he was unable to show the amount of his profits either at Booneville or at Tupelo during any of the periods aforesaid so as to be able to definitely show the amount of the actual damages sustained; but since by reason of the conduct of the defendant heretofore referred to, when considered in the light of the facts hereinafter to be mentioned, a case was presented justifying an award of punitive damages, we need only be able to say from the entire record that the plaintiff sustained some actual damages, as a legal condition precedent to the allowance of punitive damages, and to then determine whether or not in view of the smallness of this verdict under the facts of the case the judgment should be disturbed. In the case of Robinson &amp Pattison v. Goings, 63 Miss. 500, the Court held that punitive damages may be awarded for the unlawful seizure and detention of one's property, whereby he is prevented from the ordinary prosecution of his business, since such a wrong cannot be said to work only a nominal injury, and wherein the Court said: "The facts of this case warranted the jury in the infliction of punitive damages. Whether such damages may be awarded where there is only a nominal injury inflicted on the plaintiff it is not necessary to decide, since the evidence discloses a real injury, though...