Wheeler & Wilson Manuf'g Co. v. Buckhout

• Decision Date: 18 February 1897
• Citation: 36 A. 772,60 N.J.L. 102
• Parties: WHEELER & WILSON MANUF'G CO. v. BUCKHOUT.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

36 A. 772

60 N.J.L. 102

WHEELER & WILSON MANUF'G CO.

v. BUCKHOUT.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Feb. 18, 1897.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari to court of common pleas, Hudson county; Hudspeth, Judge.

Action by the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company against Alice Buckhout. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff prosecutes certiorari. Reversed.

Argued November term, 1896, before DEPUE, GUMMERE, and MAGIE, JJ.

J. W. Bissell, for prosecutor.

John J. Weller, for defendant.

MAGIE, J. This certiorari has brought before us a judgment in favor of Alice Buckhout, the defendant, against the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, the prosecutor, entered in the Hudson common pleas upon an appeal from a judgment of the district court of the city of Hoboken. Among the reasons assigned for the reversal of this judgment there is but one which is deemed to require consideration. By that reason it is charged that legal evidence offered by the prosecutor was excluded by the trial judge. By the state of the case it appears that the action was brought by Mrs. Buckhout to recover damages for an assault and battery committed upon her by certain persons claimed to have been in the employ of prosecutor, and for whose acts it was responsible, in the attempt to remove from her possession a sewing machine which belonged, or had belonged, to the prosecutor. It also appears both from the evidence and the charge of the judge that it was a question in the ease whether Mrs. Buckhout had acquired title to the machine, although not paid for, or had possession of it under a contract of sale, conditioned that the title thereto should remain in prosecutor until it was paid for, and with the right reserved to prosecutor to take possession of it on default in payment. Prosecutor produced a written paper purporting to be signed by Mrs. Buckhout. If signed by her, it established the fact that the sale was conditional, and that no title had passed to her. But, when shown the paper, she denied that the signature appended to it was hers. It became important for prosecutor to establish its genuineness. To that end prosecutor asked her to write her name, which she did three times while upon the witness stand. It also produced other signatures which she admitted had been made by her. It then called John G. Fisher, who testified that he was the county clerk, and that previous to becoming clerk he had been employed in the clerk's office; that his whole service there extended over a...