Young v. Corrigan

• Decision Date: 18 March 1912
• Docket Number: 7,902.
• Citation: 208 F. 431
• Parties: YOUNG v. CORRIGAN.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

208 F. 431

YOUNG v. CORRIGAN.

No. 7,902.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Western Division.

March 18, 1912

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

W. S Anderson, of Youngstown, Ohio, and John Marron, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for plaintiff.

Samuel H. Holding, of Cleveland, Ohio, for defendant.

KILLITS District Judge.

The issue in this case is a politely made and courteously urged but nevertheless a sharp, challenge of the fairness of the judge presiding, both in the conduct of the trial and in the instructions to the jury.

Plaintiff was defeated by an adverse verdict in her attempt to mulct defendant for an alleged breach of promise of marriage. The trial developed so much unsavoriness that, for the sake of public decency and that the putrid mass may be undisturbed, we do not largely discuss its features. The plaintiff rested her case, claiming a specific and formal contract to marry, on her own testimony, in which she confessed to a line of conduct before and leading up to and during the continuance of the alleged engagement which created a suspicion that the court's processes were invoked to aid an adventuress. The defense brought out fact after fact of depravity and immoral conduct imputed to plaintiff prior to the alleged contract, in much of which the mother of plaintiff was associated. Testimony was introduced tending to show that the girl had been used by the mother as a bait to induce well-to-do men of loose morals into compromising positions that they might be blackmailed.

The testimony concerning the conduct of plaintiff prior to the alleged breach of contract was clearly competent. A sufferer from a broken contract of marriage may demand damages by way of compensation for injury to reputation and character and for humiliation endured. This is elementary, and, by way of mitigating damages, testimony that the plaintiff was at the time she sustained damages a prostitute, an adventuress, a woman of lewd and low report among her fellow citizens was admissible beyond the possibility of question. Such a woman cannot possibly sustain the same degree of injury to reputation and character as a noble woman, because she has less of either to be affected. A common prostitute cannot suffer humiliation to the same degree as a woman of pure character and deportment. Wigmore on Evidence, Secs. 75, 206; Jones on Evidence, Sec. 151; Wharton on Evidence, Sec. 52. The latter author says:

'When the plaintiff claims that his character has been damaged and his feelings crushed by such a breach of promise, then in mitigation of damages it may be shown that he had no character to be hurt by the breach and no feelings that would be particularly shocked.'

This instruction, to which plaintiff objected, we think therefore was entirely proper:

'To some extent, as you have already seen, the character of the plaintiff is proper for you to know in determining whether or not there was a contract. It is also essential in meting out justice between the parties to this case, if you get to the point where you think you should award damages to the plaintiff against the defendant, that you should know both the character and reputation of the plaintiff, the woman, at or about the time of the alleged breach of contract, because damages in a case of this kind depend in some measure upon the relation which the plaintiff sustained in the community in which she lived and depend in some measure upon her capacity to suffer from the affront which a breach would bring to her. You will observe that character is what a person actually is. Reputation is what the community in which that person lives thinks such a person is-- the estimate that the community places upon such a person. In a breach of promise case the woman may be damaged in her character by the breach and she may be damaged in her reputation, and you cannot know the extent of damage to either character or reputation until you know what they were before the breach.'

This line of testimony was also competent as against plaintiff's claim that she was seduced. Her counsel demanded aggravated damages on this ground, although not pleaded. In this light it is not material whether defendant knew her history or not; evidence of previous loose, wanton, and lewd conduct, of specific acts, as well as of reputation, is admissible. 35 Cyc. 1314, note 84.

But plaintiff urges that the court nowhere limited the application of this line of evidence to mitigation of damages. It is perhaps sufficient to answer this by the observation that plaintiff did not ask the court to so limit it, but her counsel confined themselves to general exceptions and failed wholly to except to the charge in this respect.

But this evidence was also admissible touching plaintiff's claim that Corrigan seduced her. Testimony of a courtezan that she was seduced has manifest weakness of credibility. Again, to the extent that her character was known to defendant before the alleged proposal, the evidence thereof was competent for the reason given in this instruction, which also displeased plaintiff's counsel:

'Some testimony has been offered here by way of defense (whether it appeals to you or not is for you to say) suggesting that before the time of this alleged engagement the plaintiff was of unchaste character. If you find that fact to be established by a preponderance of the evidence, if that be the fact, and it is your judgment that her character in that respect was known to the defendant before the night on which this alleged contract was entered into, then you may consider that situation as bearing upon the probability of the defendant's proposing to make a woman of that character his wife.'

The record shows that defendant, on the night when he is said to have proposed, had every reason to know, perhaps not all that was shown on the trial, but enough to awaken any mature mind to the belief that he was dealing with an unchaste woman. Pure young women are not understood to freely accompany strange men on a tour of the brothels of a large city, nor to proceed alone 300 miles to become the unchaperoned companions, at a public resort, of young men whom they have never theretofore met except through the medium of an inspection of the 'red light' districts. Miss Young, on her own version of the facts, in accepting so readily Corrigan's invitation to become his associate at French Lick, established an accurate measurement of her character for chastity in the mind of every man possessing an average knowledge of human nature or with even ordinary human experience.

If we may accept the testimony of McKesson, Gerlach, Colling-wood, and the defendant, the night spent in visiting the various houses of prostitution in Pittsburgh on the occasion when the plaintiff and defendant first met was enough to establish the lack of chaste character on the part of the plaintiff.

The defense, added to the admissions of plaintiff, but strengthened the suspicion that the court was wronged when it was entered to bring such a case, and the extent and character of the rebuttal was awaited with interest. To our surprise, except for attempts to impeach some of the defendant's witnesses, that took the form only of the plaintiff's unsupported denials of the serious matters urged against the plaintiff's character and her deportment. The mother, who had been active in and about the precincts of the court during the trial, and who acted within our observation as mistress of ceremonies for her daughter in receiving reporters and newspaper artists, and whose name had been used as the associate of plaintiff in many compromising situations, and who was shown not only to be her most important witness but one whose testimony was called for by every consideration of affection and interest, was not placed upon the stand.

The omission gave rise to a suggestion in the charge which is urged as error and which appears in the transcript as follows:

'Now, gentlemen of the jury, I have this notion about a lawsuit, that it is the function of the lawsuit to get at the truth of a case and that it is the duty of the parties to a lawsuit to exhaust reasonably within their power, as the jury reasonably sees the power is within their reach, the avenues of testimony leading to a determination of the truth, and, in determining where the facts of this case lie, it is proper for you to look to the manner in which this case is presented to you to determine whether or not the parties to this case, either or both of them, have reasonably exercised the opportunities open to them to enlighten you as to what the facts are, and if you find in the reason of things, as these circumstances illuminate your judgment, that there were reasonably at hand, within the command of either party to this case, witnesses who might give you valuable testimony upon any proposition, who were not put upon the stand, you are permitted to draw such inferences as reasonable men would draw under such circumstances from the failure to employ such opportunity. Only reasonable diligence in the elucidation of the truth is required of the parties, but there has appeared in this case a series of matters upon which one witness appears from this testimony to have been capable of speaking, who was not placed upon the stand-- the mother of the plaintiff. She could have told us whether or not, in some degree at least, the witness Tom Mack told the truth. She could have told us in some degree or not whether in fact the plaintiff got home from Cleveland on the morning of July 1st or later. She could have told us whether or not the plaintiff had an engagement ring produced at or about the illuminating time. She could have thrown some light upon the credibility of Mrs. Jacobs and Mrs. Harrington. She could have told us

...