United Breeders' Co. v. Wright

• Decision Date: 15 November 1909
• Citation: 139 Mo. App. 195,122 S.W. 1105
• Parties: UNITED BREEDERS' CO. v. WRIGHT.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

122 S.W. 1105

139 Mo. App. 195

UNITED BREEDERS' CO. v. WRIGHT.

Kansas City Court of Appeals. Missouri.

November 15, 1909.

1. CONTRACTS (§ 94) — NEGLIGENCE — EFFECT.

A competent business man, laboring under no disability, is bound by a contract signed by him without reading it, on the representation that the adverse party was in a hurry to catch a train.

2. JUSTICES OF THE PEACE (§ 98) — PLEADING — FILING WRITTEN INSTRUMENT — JURISDICTION.

In a suit in justice's court on account for goods sold and delivered, the failure of plaintiff to file the written contract for the purchase of the goods, does not affect the jurisdiction of the court.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Andrew County; A. D. Burnes, Judge.

Action by the United Breeders' Company against C. R. Wright. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals. Reversed and remanded.

J. B. Majors, L. W. Booher, and Hine & Cross, for appellant. J. A. Sanders, S. Fee, and P. C. Breit, for respondent.

JOHNSON, J.

This case was before us on a former appeal (134 Mo. App. 717, 115 S. W. 470), and was reversed and remanded. A second trial resulted in a verdict and judgment for defendant, and the cause is here again on the appeal of plaintiff. We refer to our former opinion for a statement of the facts and our views on the law of the case.

When we remanded the cause for another trial, we thought perhaps facts not brought out by defendant might exist, which, if adduced, would give a different cast to the case; but we find the evidence in the present record to be substantially the same as that before considered. In our opinion we spoke of defendant's admission that he had been careless in signing the contract. In the last trial, apparently thinking he had "put his foot in it" by that admission, defendant denied admitting he had been careless, and said he had only confessed to being negligent. He then declared he had not been negligent, "because I didn't have a chance to be negligent." Of course, no differentiating effect should be accorded such quibbling. The law will characterize his conduct, regardless of his own opinion about it. He was inexcusably careless. Being a competent business man, laboring under no disability, he had no business signing a contract without reading it, merely because the man who asked him to sign it was in a hurry to catch a train. We declare as a matter of law that his own fault was the sole cause of the predicament in which he finds himself, and since he admits that the...