U-Haul Co. of Alabama v. Long
| Citation | 382 So.2d 545 |
| Decision Date | 28 March 1980 |
| Docket Number | U-HAUL,No. 78-587,78-587 |
| Parties | CO. OF ALABAMA, a Corporation v. Charles LONG. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Carl E. Chamblee, Birmingham, for appellant.
James R. Shaw, of Huie, Fernambucq, Stewart & Smith, Birmingham, for appellee.
This is an appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment for the defendant based upon the defendant's counterclaim.
The plaintiff, U-Haul, brought an action for conversion against the defendant, Long, claiming $2,000.00 in damages for the value of a U-Haul trailer. It also claimed damages for loss of rental income from January 3, 1975 to May 6, 1976 and also punitive damages in the amount of $5,000.00, or a total of $12,090.00.
The defendant counterclaimed, alleging trespass and conversion by the defendant in taking a riding lawn mower belonging to the defendant, and demanded $38,000.00 as compensatory and punitive damages.
The plaintiff is an Alabama corporation engaged in renting automobile trailers, trucks and moving equipment. The defendant was engaged in a service station business and was a franchised dealer renting U-Haul equipment. In March, 1975 the defendant terminated his service station business to engage in a wrecker business. In that business he retained a contract with the City of Birmingham whereby his wrecker service was obliged to tow in abandoned, wrecked, stolen or confiscated automobiles and other vehicles for the City. Although the dealer contract itself provided for the surrender of all U-Haul equipment upon termination, there was evidence that this particular equipment was obtained earlier by the defendant from another local dealer pursuant to an agreement with a U-Haul agent, Byrum, in exchange for the defendant's promise to notify U-Haul about its equipment which was towed in. After the defendant's service station was closed the defendant used the trailer at the wrecker service lot in connection with that business. When on May 7, 1976 the trailer was removed from the defendant's residence by the plaintiff, it contained the riding mower locked inside.
The evidence concerning the arrangement for the defendant to retain the trailer and use it was in sharp dispute. On the one hand the plaintiff contended that there was no such arrangement. Byrum denied making such a contract, and testified that he found the trailer on a "tip," and that it was removed from a partially hidden location at the defendant's residence. Both the then president of U-Haul and his immediate predecessor denied the existence of any such contract with the defendant. The defendant, on the other hand, contended that the trailer was lent to him through an arrangement with Byrum in exchange for his promise to notify U-Haul when their equipment had been hauled to the wrecker storage lot, in order to hold down their storage charges assessed by the City. The defendant testified that the trailer was kept at his wrecker service lot for almost the entire fourteen months it had been in his possession and in plain view of U-Haul's field representatives who would come there to pick up other equipment. None of these, he stated, ever asked him to return it. He had placed the mower inside the trailer and moved it from the wrecker lot to his residence where it was later found.
Shortly after the trailer was picked up, the defendant telephoned Byrum and demanded the return of the mower. Although he knew it was the defendant's mower, Byrum directed him to U-Haul's attorney. Demand was then made to the lawyer but the mower was not returned. As to that the president of U-Haul testified that it was company policy to require proof of ownership or it would let the courts decide the issue of ownership.
The evidence also disclosed that U-Haul of Alabama did not own the trailer in question and the president, Ohman, did not know the identity of the real owner, except that it would be an investor-employee of one of the U-Haul corporations. Although the company could trace a trailer in approximately three weeks, their records did not show that any tracer had been made on this trailer and Ohman did not know of any having been made during the sixteen months it was out of service. Mr. Ohman also testified that the type of contract described by the defendant, allowing him to use the trailer, would not have been shown in the company's activity record for that trailer.
The defendant testified that his mower was about one year old and had cost between $500 and $600 when new. Mr. Byrum testified that it had been used by the U-Haul Company at its moving center to pull trailers around, from the "four by six" size weighing close to 500 pounds to the "six by twelve" size, a steel trailer six feet wide by twelve feet long.
The U-Haul trailer in question was a discontinued model which had been manufactured at a cost of $470.00 in 1968, and had a replacement cost of $945.00. The company claimed a rental of $6.00 per day for every day the trailer was in the defendant's possession, but the evidence showed that prior to that time it had never been rented a full thirty days in any...
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...not need to bear any particular mathematical relationship to the compensatory-damages award in the case. See, e.g., U-Haul Co. of Alabama v. Long, 382 So.2d 545 (Ala. 1980); accord, Associates Fin. Servs. Co. of Alabama, Inc. v. Barbour, 592 So.2d 191 (Ala.1991). In earlier times, the pract......
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