Wanamaker v. Chase

• Citation: 81 Pa.Super. 201
• Decision Date: 12 July 1923
• Docket Number: 125-1922
• Parties: John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, v. Chase, Appellant
• Court: Superior Court of Pennsylvania

81 Pa.Super. 201

John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, v. Chase, Appellant

No. 125-1922

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

July 12, 1923

Argued October 11, 1922

Appeal by defendant from judgment of C.P. No. 3, Philadelphia County, Sept. T., 1920, No. 6437, on verdict for plaintiff in the case of John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, v. Carrie D Chase.

Assumpsit on a book account for goods sold and delivered. Before Davis J.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the Superior Court.

Verdict for plaintiff in the sum of $ 278.37 and judgment thereon. Defendant appealed.

Errors assigned were various rulings on evidence, and points for charge.

Affirmed.

Roy Martin Boyd, and with him J. Claude Bedford, for appellant.

George Sterner, and with him William L. Nevin, for appellee.

Before Porter, Henderson, Trexler, Keller, Linn and Gawthrop, JJ.

OPINION

PORTER, J.

This is an action to recover for merchandise sold and delivered. The plaintiff recovered a judgment in the court below and the defendant appeals. The first, second and fourth assignments of error refer to the admission in evidence of the records and book accounts of the plaintiff relating to the transactions involved and the testimony as to the manner in which those records were made up.

The bookkeeper and bill clerk of the plaintiff testified at length as to the manner in which the records of the sales of merchandise were kept in the establishment of the plaintiff. The extent of the business of the establishment rendered it absolutely impossible to keep a counter book in which all sales made by the store were set down in chronological order. The accounts could not all be kept in a single ledger, and the account of this defendant was known as ledger " CA," which was in charge of Miss Mayberry who was called a ledger clerk, and Miss Heron called a bill clerk. These witnesses described the manner in which transactions with those who had credit or charge accounts were recorded. It is unnecessary to say that the sales clerks employed in this establishment number many hundreds, and are located in scores of different departments. The clerk making a sale upon credit made out a sales slip stating the date, describing each article sold, the price thereof, if more than one article the total amount of the sale, the name and address of the purchaser and if the purchaser produced a " store coin," or token, entitling her to credit, so stating and giving the number of said coin. This memorandum was referred to in the testimony as a schedule or sales slip. The sales slip was then sent to the accounting department where the total amount of the charge, without specifying items, was entered in the ledger by the ledger clerk, who immediately passed it to the bill clerk. The bill clerk made from this sales slip, by a single operation of the typewriter, two itemized statements of the sale, one referred to in the evidence as the original, being retained until the end of the month when it was sent to the purchaser, and the other, which was called a carbon copy, being retained by the seller and at the end of the month bound with other records of sales during the month to the same and other purchasers whose accounts were kept in the ledger " CA." The clerks who in this case made the entries in the ledger and two binders, for the months of April and May, which contained the carbon copies of the bills which were sent to the defendant, testified that they made the entries promptly at the time of the transactions to which they referred. The books were offered in evidence, and the defendant, while not objecting to the admission of the ledger, did object to the two binders. This objection was upon two grounds: First, that the binders contained only carbon copies of the bills which were sent to the defendant and not being originals, could not be admitted, and second, that, even if originals, they were not books of original entry, for the reason that the original records were the sales slips. There is no merit in the first ground of objection. Where several copies of a writing are made at the same time by the same mechanical operation each...