Travelers' Ins. Co. v. Parker
| Decision Date | 16 November 1900 |
| Citation | 47 A. 1042,92 Md. 22 |
| Parties | TRAVELERS' INS. CO. v. PARKER. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from superior court of Baltimore city; Henry D. Harlan Judge.
"To be officially reported."
Action by Frank M. Parker against the Travelers' Insurance Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.
William M. Marbury, for appellant.
Chas L. Harley and Louis B. Bernei, for appellee.
Argued before McSHERRY, C.J., and FOWLER, BRISCOE, BOYD, PEARCE SCHMUCKER, and JONES, JJ.
The appellee sued the appellant in assumpsit to recover for services rendered to it, and, the judgment being in his favor, this appeal has been taken from the rulings of the court in excluding certain evidence offered by the defendant, and in granting two prayers of the plaintiff, and rejecting the defendant's only prayer. The exception relating to the exclusion of evidence, having been abandoned at the argument, will not, therefore, be considered.
The declaration contains the common money counts, and also a special count based upon the following written memorandum between the parties: The execution of this agreement was admitted, and it was agreed that the services sued for were all performed between December 1, 1895, and October 1, 1896. It was further admitted that the plaintiff did, during the time covered by this suit, $6,480 worth of business, and that the defendant, if liable at all, is liable for the sum of $648, with interest, in the diseretion of the jury, from June 1, 1897. The plaintiff does not claim that there was any other express contract between the defendant and himself than that above set forth, but he alleges that he continued in the service of the defendant uninterruptedly from December 1, 1892, to October 1, 1896, without any change of contract, and that, by implication of law, the original contract has been extended or renewed from year to year so as to cover the period between December 1,1895, and October 1, 1896; all services rendered prior to December 1, 1895, having been paid for in full. The defendant's first contention is that the memorandum never was a legally binding contract, for the reason that it was entirely one sided and without consideration; secondly, that, even if a binding contract, it was terminated December 1, 1893, and a new contract was entered into between the plaintiff and John L. Shuff, the general agent of the defendant company in Maryland, under the terms of which the services were rendered to Shuff personally, until November, 1895, and after that date to Frank H. Thomas, who then succeeded Shuff in the agency; and, thirdly, that, if this substituted contract be not established by the evidence, there was no legally sufficient evidence to entitle the jury to find that the parties to the original contract agreed to extend it over the period from December 1, 1895, to October 1, 1896.
On the first point the appellant's argument is that Parker did not bind himself to render services for a year, or for any definite time, nor did he even agree to write any special amount of insurance, or to write any at all, unless he should choose to do so, and that no obligation of any sort is thereby imposed on him. But this position is not tenable. A very similar contract was before this court in Jaffray v King, 34 Md. 220, where the services of King were engaged as a salesman for a definite period, at $350 per month, the contract being made through a letter from Jaffray & Co. to King saying, King was subsequently dismissed from this employment on the alleged ground that his employers had ascertained he had been attending to the business of another house. In a suit by King to recover damages for this alleged wrongful dismissal, it was held, though King had signed to contract, and there was nothing in the letter mentioned expressly creating or defining any obligation on his part, that he was not bound to give them his whole time, but that he was bound to serve them in good faith and to the extent of his ability, and that, if doing this did not require his whole time and entire services, he could occupy the remainder of his time in any other pursuit he saw fit, provided it was not inconsistent with his contract with them, and did not impair the value of his services to them as salesman of their goods in the Baltimore market. That case is stronger than the one before us, because there the compensation was a large fixed sum, while here it is dependent upon the amount of insurance written. If the purpose of the company had been to monopolize the whole time and services of Parker, so as to insure the largest volume of business they would command, the contract could, and doubtless would, have been so drawn. And in Black v. Woodrow, 39 Md. 215, Judge Alvey said: "It not infrequently occurs that contracts on their face and by their express terms appear to be obligatory on one party only, but in such cases, if it is manifest that it was the intention of the parties, and the consideration upon which one party assumed an express obligation, that there should be a corresponding and correlative obligation on the other party, such corresponding and correlative obligation will be implied." Upon this sound principle of construction, we think Parker was clearly under an implied obligation to serve the insurance company in good faith, within the limitations laid down in Jaffray v. King, and that the contract is not lacking in the requisite mutuality of consideration and obligation. The...
To continue reading
Request your trial