Sheffield v. Beckwith

• Decision Date: 13 January 1916
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: SHEFFIELD v. BECKWITH.

96 A. 316

90 Conn. 93

SHEFFIELD

v. BECKWITH.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Jan. 13, 1916.

Appeal from Superior Court, New London County; William L. Bennett, Judge.

Action by Lucien M. Sheffield against Alva G. Beckwith, for alienation of wife's affections. From a judgment on a verdict for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Abel P. Tanner and George C. Morgan, both of New London, for appellant. Rollin U. Tyler, of Tylerville, and Clayton B. Smith, of New London, for appellee.

BEACH, J. The complaint is in two counts, one charging seduction and criminal conversation, and the other alienation of affections. The jury found for the defendant on the first count and for the plaintiff on the second count, assessing the damages at $1,750.

In the course of the trial the plaintiff's wife, being examined in reference to her relations with her husband before the alleged alienation, was asked:

"Now subsequently to this time were reports coming to you of his relations with still other women?"

The question was at first excluded, but after some discussion the court said:

"You may put it in if you think you are helping your client's case."

This remark of the court is challenged as erroneous because it tended to weaken the evidential value of the answer. If we should assume that this remark was intended as an observation on the evidence, it was well within the statutory province of the court. General Statutes, § 753; Scholfield Gear & Pulley Co. v. Scholfield, 71 Conn. 1, 13, 40 Atl. 1046; State v. Fetterer, 65 Conn. 287, 291, 32 Atl. 394; Wheeler v. Thomas, 67 Conn. 577, 580, 35 Atl. 499.

The defendant attempted to prove, among other things, in mitigation of damages that the plaintiff had committed adultery in 1909, and for that purpose the plaintiff's wife testified that plaintiff admitted contracting a venereal disease while on a trip to Boston, but claimed to have contracted it by drinking after somebody. In respect to this matter the court charged the jury as follows:

"I have heard counsel here allege it was proven to you that Mr. Sheffield had committed adultery in 1909. I fail to see how that has been proven before you. They have produced a bottle of medicine as some evidence he had disease, but they have not shown that the disease could not have been contracted innocently by him by contact or in traveling, as they say he said with drinking, from some one who did have this contagious disease; and it should be shown to you, if you find he had it, that it was necessarily the consequence of connection with a woman, and that it might not have been taken in some other way. So I say I think the proof is not here that he committed adultery. However that may be, of course, as I have said, you have to find out what that society and affection was which he says he lost, and so bring in your damages accordingly."

The defendant excepts to this part of the charge as erroneous because it is contrary to the generally accepted rule that a venereal disease, contracted by the husband while away from his wife, is in civil actions prima facie evidence of adultery. Greenleaf on Evidence (15th Ed.) § 44; 2 Bishop on Marriage, Divorce, and Separation, § 1393. 1 Wigmore on Evidence, § 168. Assuming that the jury were instructed by the remarks objected to, that they could not find the plaintiff guilty of adultery in 1909, we do not think that any harmful error was committed. From the fragments of her testimony in the record it appears that the plaintiff's wife, although she believed in 1909 that he had committed adultery, continued to live with him as her husband until April, 1913, more than three years after the supposed offense, because she had forgiven him "to a certain extent." The fact of adultery as a mitigating...