Stouts Mountain Coal Co. v. Grubb

• Decision Date: 22 March 1928
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 780
• Citation: 116 So. 156,217 Ala. 274
• Parties: STOUTS MOUNTAIN COAL CO. v. GRUBB.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

116 So. 156

217 Ala. 274

STOUTS MOUNTAIN COAL CO. v. GRUBB.

6 Div. 780

Supreme Court of Alabama

March 22, 1928

Appeal from Circuit Court, Cullman County; O. Kyle, Judge.

Action for malicious prosecution by Roy Grubb against the Stouts Mountain Coal Company. From a judgment for plaintiff defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Gardner and Bouldin, JJ., dissenting in part.

F.E St. John, of Cullman, for appellant.

A.A Griffith, of Cullman, for appellee.

ANDERSON C.J.

As we understand the decisions with reference to the acquittal of a person charged with crime as an evidential fact of the existence or nonexistence of probable cause in a civil action, it is admissible when the acquittal amounts to a mere discharge by a committing magistrate or where a grand jury failed to indict after investigating the charge. This fact, however, would not be conclusive evidence of the want of probable cause, but only prima facie evidence sufficient to shift the burden of proof to the defendant. Hanchey v. Brunson, 175 Ala. 236, 56 So. 971, Ann.Cas.1914C, 804, and authorities cited, including Newell on Malicious Prosecutions, p. 282, and 2 Greenleaf on Evidence, § 435. On the other hand, it seems well settled that the acquittal of an accused upon a final trial is not even prima facie evidence of the want of probable cause. Standard Oil Co. v. Davis, 208 Ala. 565, 94 So. 754, and cases cited. This distinction is evidently based upon the logical theory, that, where there is a final acquittal, it rests upon a failure to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, while upon a preliminary examination or the finding of an indictment by a grand jury the failure to bind over or indict involves merely the nonexistence of a probable cause. The plaintiff was acquitted by Judge Griffin acting simply as a committing magistrate, and the trial court did not err in the excepted to portion of the oral charge.

The trial court did not err in declining the motion to exclude all of the plaintiff's evidence upon the idea that this defendant did not authorize or ratify the prosecution. In the first place, this method of eradicating evidence has been often condemned, and, second, there was evidence from which the jury could infer that the superintendent authorized Holland to start the prosecution.

There was no error in refusing the defendant's charge, made the basis of the tenth assignment of error. If not otherwise faulty, it was misleading and confusing in an attempted distinction...