Stanley v. Sheffield Land, Iron & Coal Co.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1888
• Citation: 4 So. 34,83 Ala. 260
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court
• Parties: STANLEY ET AL. v. SHEFFIELD L., I. & COAL CO.

4 So. 34

83 Ala. 260

STANLEY ET AL. v. SHEFFIELD L., I. & COAL CO.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 28, 1888

Appeal from circuit court, Colbert county; H. C. SPEAKE, Judge.

This action of assumpsit was brought by the appellants A. S. Stanley & Co., against the appellees, the Sheffield Land, Iron & Coal Company, to recover a certain amount alleged to be due them as transferees of a large number of "labor tickets" issued by the defendant corporation. The suit is defended on the plea that the defendant never gave any authority to any one to make an arrangement with the plaintiff, or with any one else, by which these labor tickets were to be transferred, or to pass as money. The plaintiff sought to introduce the evidence brought out in the opinion and, on account of the ruling of the lower court in not allowing him to introduce the said evidence, the plaintiff was compelled to take a nonsuit, with leave to have a bill of exceptions. The plaintiff in the court below, the appellant here, now assigns the ruling of the court upon the evidence, as shown in the opinion, as error.

J T. Kirk, for appellant.

Emmett O'Neal, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

If the action were brought by the plaintiffs as transferees of the labor tickets described in the bill of exceptions, it is clear that, under the authority of Tabler v. Coal Co., 79 Ala. 377, no recovery on them could be sustained. The count based on this phase of the case was abandoned, however, in the court below by being stricken from the complaint, and the present action is on the common counts. The suit can be sustained only on the theory that the amount paid by the plaintiffs to the holders of these labor tickets was paid to them by the request or acquiescence of the defendant corporation, acting through some officer or agent possessing such authority. Much evidence was offered with the view of proving this fact; but all of it was excluded as inadmissible, on the ground that it did not tend to prove this disputed fact, the onus of which was on the plaintiffs. The witness Miller, himself one of the plaintiffs in this action, testifies that, before he became interested as a member of the firm, he was in the employment of the defendant company as commissary, having authority to hire and pay laborers for grading the streets of Sheffield, and that he made an arrangement with the plaintiff Stanley by which it was agreed that if he would purchase the company's commissary supplies, and sell goods there, he could take those tickets by paying merchandise for them; that the company would redeem them; and that the trade was made on the basis of this agreement. It appears that, at the time this agreement was made, the witness was negotiating to become a partner with Stanley in the business. It is not shown that the company knew that this stipulation entered into the trade as a term or...