Schaefer v. Washington Safety Deposit Co.
| Decision Date | 06 December 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 11380.,11380. |
| Citation | 281 Ill. 43,117 N.E. 781 |
| Parties | SCHAEFER v. WASHINGTON SAFETY DEPOSIT CO. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to Appellate Court, First District, on Error to Municipal Court of Chicago; Samuel H. Trude, Judge.
Action by Florence E. Schaefer against the Washington Safety Deposit Company. To review a judgment of the Appellate Court, reversing judgment of the municipal court for plaintiff, she brings error. Judgment of the Appellate Court (203 Ill. App. 221) reversed, and of the municipal court affirmed.M. D. Dolan, of Chicago (Freeman K. Blake, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.
Charles V. Barrett, of Chicago (Henry T. Chace, Jr., Edward Osgood Brown, James C. Hutchins, Carl Meyer, William S. Miller, Theodore S. Chapman, and Edward Eagle Brown, all of Chicago, of counsel), for defendant in error.
The municipal court of Chicago rendered a judgment in favor of the plaintiff, Florence E. Schaefer, for $1,250 and costs against the defendant in error, the Washington Safety Deposit Company, and the Appellate Court for the First District reversed the judgment without remanding the cause. A writ of certiorari was awarded to bring the record to this court for a review of the judgment of the Appellate Court.
The defendant in error has moved to dismiss the writ for lack of jurisdiction, on the ground that the judgment of the Appellate Court did not exceed $1,000. The judgment of the municipal court was for more than $1,000, and was reversed, annulled, and set aside by the judgment of the Appellate Court. The question presented by the petition for a writ of certiorari was which judgment was right. The motion to dismiss the writ of error is overruled.
An Appellate Court may reverse a judgment for error of law or error of fact. If for error of law, which may be corrected on another trial, the cause must be remanded; but if for error of fact, where no material evidence has been wrongfully excluded, the judgment of the Appellate Court may be final, but the ultimate facts upon which the judgment rests must be found and recited in the judgment. In this case the Appellate Court in the opinion filed dealt with alleged errors of law and also made the following finding of fact:
‘The court finds from the evidence that plaintiff has not proven defendant to be liable in the manner and form charged in her statement of claim, and, further, that plaintiff has failed to prove any actionable negligence against defendant in the matters set forth in her statement of claim.’
If this was a finding of fact as to the matters in controversy, the only function of this court is to determine whether the law was properly applied to the facts as found.
The issue and evidence before the Appellate Court were as follows: The statement of claim by the plaintiff was for $1,250 deposited in a safety deposit box rented or leased from the defendant by the plaintiff for one year, beginning January 2, 1914, for $3, which box was under the care, control, and management of the defendant, and it alleged that the money was abstracted from the box some time between January 2 and July 11, 1914, without the consent or knowledge of the plaintiff, and in violation of defendant's contract to safely keep said sum of money. The plaintiff was ruled to file a copy of her contract with the defendant, and filed a copy of a receipt for $3 for rent of Safe No. 260 in the vaults of the defendant for one year, subject, however, to the rules and conditions indorsed thereon and made a part of the receipt and of any renewals or extensions thereto. One of nine provisions printed on the back of the receipt was the following:
‘The liability of the company is expressly limited to the exercise of ordinary diligence to prevent the opening of the within mentioned safe during the within mentioned term, or any extension or renewal thereof, by any person other than the renter or his duly authorized representative, and such opening shall not be inferable from the loss of any of its contents; nor shall the company be liable for permitting a deputy of the renter to have access to and remove the contents of said safe after the renter's death or disability and before the company has knowledge of such death or disability.’
The defendant filed an affidavit of merits, denying the deposit of the money in the box, or that it was abstracted from the box without the consent or knowledge of the plaintiff, and affirmed that it had lived up to the terms of the contract at all times during the existence of the lease and had used ordinary care to prevent the opening of the box during the term of the lease by any other person than the plaintiff. Leave was given to file a reply to the affidavit of merits, and the reply of the plaintiff, sworn to, denied that the defendant used ordinary care and diligence to prevent the opening of the box during the term of the lease by any other person than the plaintiff.
The evidence for the plaintiff was that she rented the safety deposit box on January 2, 1914, paid for it, and received the receipt and a key; that she deposited in the box $1,250 in currency; that the box was No. 260; that the next time she went to the box was on July 11, 1914, when she signed a slip and delivered her key to the custodian; that the location of the box and the plate number had been changed; and that upon opening it the contents were gone. There was testimony of her husband that he gave her the money in large bills, and of her mother and brother that she counted the money in their presence and put it in her hand bag when she started for the defendant's place of business. The evidence for the defendant consisted of testimony of the watchfulness exercised by it over the vaults, and particularly during the time that alterations and changes were being made, and the testimony of a bank officer that he did not remember changing smaller bills into large ones for the husband of the plaintiff, as testified to by the husband, who said that he made the exchange and gave the money to his wife, and the officer said he would have remembered if he had made the exchange. The evidence for the defendant tended to prove that no one but the plaintiff had had access to the box. The Appellate Court stated that the cause of action proceeded upon the theory of the plaintiff that the defendant was presumptively liable because the money deposited in the box in January was not there in July when she next opened the box; that such was not the presumption of law, and, if it were, the presumption had been effectively rebutted by defendant's proof; that the contract of the defendant was to use ordinary diligence to prevent the opening of the box by any person other than the plaintiff, and that such opening should not be inferable from the loss of any of the contents of the box, and therefore the plaintiff was bound to prove some act of negligence causing the loss of her money, which she had failed to do. The opinion concluded with the statement that, as the plaintiff had neither stated nor proved a case entitling...
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