Sprenger v. Tacoma Traction Co.

• Decision Date: 30 November 1896
• Citation: Sprenger v. Tacoma Traction Co., 15 Wash. 660, 47 P. 17 (Wash. 1896)
• Parties: SPRENGER v. TACOMA TRACTION CO.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

47 P. 17

15 Wash. 660

SPRENGER v. TACOMA TRACTION CO.

Supreme Court of Washington

November 30, 1896

Appeal from superior court, Pierce county; W. H. Pritchard, Judge.

Action by Frank Sprenger against the Tacoma Traction Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Doolittle & Fogg, for appellant.

Frank D. Nash, for respondent.

HOYT C.J.

Defendant was operating a street-car line in the city of Tacoma, and plaintiff was a passenger on one of its cars. He was ejected therefrom by the conductor for the alleged nonpayment of his fare, and brought this action to recover damages, claiming that he had paid his fare, and that he was unlawfully ejected. The trial resulted in a verdict for $100 damages, upon which judgment was duly rendered. In its brief defendant has discussed the alleged errors of the trial court under numerous heads, but for the purposes of this opinion they can be so grouped as to present but four distinct propositions. Of these two relate to the rejection of testimony offered on the part of the defendant, the third to instructions given to the jury and refusals to instruct, and the fourth to the measure of damages.

Plaintiff having testified that he had paid his fare, and that thereafter he had been compelled to leave the car by the action of the conductor and motorman, was asked by defendant's counsel if he had not been put off of the street cars before for refusal to pay fare. This question he answered in the negative. Whereupon he was asked if he had not been put off the Northern Pacific railroad cars for nonpayment of fare. Upon objection of the plaintiff, the court refused to allow him to answer, and it is claimed that in so doing it committed error. A large number of cases have been cited to show that it is competent to prove that one has been guilty of a certain offense by proof of the commission of other offenses of the same nature. But in our opinion none of these cases are applicable to the question here presented. The fact that plaintiff had had trouble about the payment of his fare upon a railroad train would bear so remotely upon the question as to his attempting to beat the street car out of a five-cent fare that it was properly excluded from the consideration of the jury. The ruling of the court, which allowed the defendant to attempt to show that the plaintiff had had trouble about the payment of fare upon street cars, was as favorable to the defendant as it could ask.

The conductor, having testified that he collected fare on the side of the car upon which the plaintiff was sitting up to and including that of a woman sitting next to him before he left that side to collect fares upon the other, and that when he returned to the side from which he first collected fares, he sought to collect the fare of the plaintiff, was asked by defendant's counsel a question which sought to elicit from the witness a statement as to the reasons why he was sure he had left off collecting, upon the side of the car upon which the plaintiff sat, with the woman who sat next to him. The objection of plaintiff to this question was sustained, and it is claimed that, in sustaining it, the court committed error. In determining as to the correctness of this ruling, it must be remembered that the question was put by defendant to its own witness, that he...