Smith v. The Sanborn State Bank
| Decision Date | 14 June 1910 |
| Citation | 126 N.W. 779,147 Iowa 640 |
| Parties | W. B. SMITH, Appellant, v. THE SANBORN STATE BANK, Appellee |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from O'Brien District Court.--HON. WILLIAM HUTCHINSON Judge.
ACTION at law to recover damages for breach of contract. Verdict directed in favor of defendant Judgment accordingly, and plaintiff appeals. Reversed.
Reversed.
C. A Babcock, for appellant.
No appearance for appellee.
Stated as briefly as practicable, the plaintiff's petition alleges that in October, 1908, he became the owner of a certain check or bill of exchange payable to himself for the sum of $ 200, and took the paper to the plaintiff bank, and sought to obtain the money thereon. In so doing he expressly informed the officer in charge that he desired to use the money in paying a rent claim of $ 40 held by said bank for collection and the remainder in defraying the expenses of immediate medical and surgical treatment of his wife, whom he expected to remove to a hospital in the city of St. Paul, in the state of Minnesota, on the following day, and that the money represented by said check was necessary to enable him to do so. Thereupon said bank officer told plaintiff that the safe in which the funds of the bank were kept had been locked for the night, but that plaintiff could leave the draft as a deposit, together with a check for $ 43, to cover both the rent claimed and an item of $ 3 which he was owing the bank, and the remainder could be drawn by him, as the money might be needed in the treatment of his sick wife. On the following day, having given checks to others to an amount which reduced the deposit to $ 101.50, he called at the bank to obtain the same for the purpose of taking his wife to the hospital, but defendant refused to pay it over, informing him that it had applied the deposit upon a promissory note which it held against him. Upon this showing plaintiff asks to recover judgment for the sum of money so withheld, with interest. In a second count of the petition the same facts are set forth, and it is further alleged that the money represented by said check constituted the only means he had with which to secure the necessary treatment of his sick wife, and that, being poor and without property on which to secure a loan, he was delayed several days in obtaining the necessary assistance to aid him in carrying out his purpose to take his wife to the hospital, and that as a result thereof he was put to great labor and trouble and made to suffer great humiliation, anxiety and distress of mind, for which he asks damages in the sum of $ 500. The defendant admits the receipt of the check for $ 200, alleges that it paid therefrom on plaintiff's checks the sum of $ 98.50, and that it applied and now asserts the right to retain the remainder in payment of a promissory note which it then held against the plaintiff. The evidence fairly tends to sustain the allegations of the petition.
At the close of plaintiff's case defendant moved for a directed verdict in its favor an the grounds: (1) That it is shown without controversy that plaintiff's deposit being an open account subject to check, the bank had the legal right and authority to apply it in payment of plaintiff's note. (2) That the law allows no recovery of damages for mental suffering occasioned by breach of contract, and that the damages which plaintiff seeks to recover are too remote, indirect and speculative to sustain a verdict in his favor on the second count of the petition. This motion was sustained by the court, verdict returned as ordered, and judgment for costs entered against plaintiff, who appeals.
Actuated perhaps by the same spirit of saving which led it to violate its agreement with plaintiff to receive and hold the money for his use in the treatment of his sick wife, the appellee has employed no counsel to represent it in this court, and we are therefore deprived of the benefit of a brief in support of the judgment which it obtained below, and there is nothing in the record to equitably incline this court to seek for reasons to sustain it. We may assume perhaps that the appellee's view of the law governing the cause, as well as the view of the trial court thereon, is epitomized in the grounds of the motion for a directed verdict to which we have already called attention.
Referring first to the second proposition of the...
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