Stearns v. Titus

• Decision Date: 23 October 1908
• Citation: 193 N.Y. 272,85 N.E. 1077
• Parties: STEARNS v. TITUS et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

193 N.Y. 272

85 N.E. 1077

STEARNS

v.TITUS et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Oct. 23, 1908.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.

Action by George A. Stearns against George F. Titus and others. From a judgment of the Appellate Division (119 App. Div. 885,104 N. Y. Supp. 1148) unanimously affirming a judgment in favor of defendants, plaintiff appeals. Reversed, and new trial granted.

George A. Stearns, in pro. per.

Francis K. Pendleton, Corp. Counsel (Theodore Connoly, of counsel), for respondents.

CULLEN, C. J.

This action was brought to recover damages for an assault and false imprisonment. The plaintiff is a lawyer, the respondents Oppenheim and Grabe police officers, and the respondent Titus a captain of police. On the occasion of the assault complained of one Sayles, a client of the plaintiff, was in the latter's office, when Oppenheim and Grabe entered therein, and arrested Sayles upon a charge of grand larceny. No warrant had been issued for his arrest. Upon his arrest Sayles handed the plaintiff a paper, saying: ‘Here you take this. It is my defense.’ The officers demanded of the plaintiff that he surrender the paper to them, which was refused. Thereupon, after something of a scuffle, they arrested the plaintiff, who was taken to the police headquarters where the defendant Titus was in charge. The plaintiff was locked up for the night, and the next morning taken before a police magistrate, where the charge was made against him of resisting the officers in discharge of their duty. The plaintiff was discharged by the magistrate, and thereafter brought this action. The parties are in conflict in their testimony as to what took place at the time of the plaintiff's arrest and at the time of his incarceration at police headquarters, but such conflict is immaterial on this appeal. The case was submitted to the jury, a verdict was found for the defendants, and the judgment on that verdict has been unanimously affirmed by the Appellate Division. Therefore the only question before us is whether the jury in arriving at that verdict were correctly instructed by the trial court as to the law of the case.

The learned trial judge charged that there was no evidence of the commission of any crime by Sayles, and therefore the plaintiff was not guilty of resisting the officers in the discharge of their duty, so far as he may have assisted Sayles in any resistance to arrest. But he further charged the jury that if the officers had reasonable cause to apprehend that the plaintiff or Sayles intended to willfully destroy the paper handed by the latter to the former, with intent thereby to prevent the same being produced, and the officers interfered to prevent such destruction, the arrest was justified. ‘If you find there was such a purpose on the part of either the plaintiff or Sayles, or the appearance of things at the time when Sayles threw the paper on plaintiff's desk was such as to lead a reasonably prudent person to believe or suspect that such a purpose had been formed by either the plaintiff or Sayles, namely, to destroy the paper, and Oppenheim interfered to prevent such destruction, and while doing so he was assaulted by the plaintiff, his arrest under the circumstances I have mentioned, if you so find them, was...