Stratton v. Todd
| Decision Date | 19 November 1889 |
| Citation | 82 Me. 149,19 A. 111 |
| Parties | STRATTON et al. v. TODD et al. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
(Official.)
Motion to set aside verdict in supreme judicial court, Penobscot county.
Action by Lewis F. Stratton and another, against Frank Todd and others, to recover for services and expenses in driving logs for defendants, under an alleged contract with one Thomas Mason, their agent. Defendants are the owners of township 4, range 9, on the Wassatiquoik river, and made a contract, in 1884, with one Tracy, by which he was to operate there, for five logging seasons, in cutting, hauling, and driving logs, and delivering them at Penobscot boom, to defendants. Tracy had sole charge of the work. Plaintiffs claimed that Mason, as defendants' agent, agreed to pay for driving some of the logs from Mattawamkeag to the Penobscot boom. Mason denied this. There was a verdict for plaintiffs, which defendants move to set aside as against the law and evidence.
D. F. Davis and C. A. Bailey, for plaintiffs. C. P. Stetson, for defendants.
In order to maintain this action, the burden of proof is upon the plaintiffs to show that, in the matter in controversy, Thomas Mason was the authorized agent of the defendants, or by them held out as such.
An examination of the testimony not only fails to show this agency, but does show the contrary. Mason had an agency in regard to the logs, but it was confined to the disposal of them after they had been driven to the Penobscot boom. The claim in suit is for driving them above the boom. The duties and responsibilities of these two positions are so different that proof of an agency in one will have no tendency to show that it exists in the other. Hazeltine v. Miller, 44 Me. 177. Besides, the case shows that, for all work to be done above the boom, Foster J. Tracy had the sole responsibility and control, by virtue of a written contract with the defendants.
Nor are the plaintiffs any more successful in relation to the other branch of their case. True it is that if the defendants have by their words or acts held out Mason as their general agent in respect to these logs, or in respect to this particular transaction, they might be estopped from denying such agency after the plaintiffs had in good faith acted upon such representations. But it is not pretended that the defendants have personally made any such representations. The most that is claimed is that Mason has performed certain acts in regard to the logs, which...
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Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Arbogast
...behalf of the landlord to make necessary repairs in a floor located in a building occupied by the tenant. It was decided in Stratton v. Todd, 82 Me. 149, 19 A. 111, that an agent authorized to sell logs after they had a particular location had no implied authority to contract for driving ce......
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Stevens v. Frost.
...of proof is upon the plaintiff to prove the agency and the scope thereof. It cannot be presumed. 3 C.J.S., Agency, § 315; Stratton v. Todd, 82 Me. 149, 151, 19 A. 111; Castner v. Richardson, 18 Colo. 496, 33 P. 163; Schmidt v. Shaver, 196 Ill. 108, 63 N.E. 655, 89 Am.St.Rep. 250; American C......
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Brown v. Dickey
...were authorized by the association, and so were ineffectual. Peirce v. Morse-Oliver Co., 94 Me. 406, 47 Atl. 914; Stratton v. Todd, 82 Me. 149, 19 Atl. 111. But the defendant further contends that the plaintiffs have no title to the lot of land demised under the lease in perpetuam to J. War......
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