92 Iowa 52 | Iowa | 1894
On the twentieth day of June, 1884, the plaintiff made to the defendant two promissory notes for the sum of one hundred and sixty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents each, with interest thereon at the rate of ten per cent per annum after maturity. The first was due on the first day of January, 1885, and the other, two months later. They were given for rent of a farm owned by the defendant and occupied by the plaintiff. To secure the payment of the notes the plaintiff executed to the defendant a chattel mortgage on certain stock. In December, 1885, the plaintiff moved to Kansas, taking with him a portion of the mortgaged property. In October, 1886, the defendant, claiming that the mortgage debt was unpaid, filed with a justice of the peace of Story county an information, which charged the plaintiff with the crime of larceny in concealing and removing from the county and disposing of a part of the mortgaged property. A warrant for his arrest was issued, and placed in the hands of an officer for service, and such proceedings were had that the plaintiff was arrested in Kansas, and enough of the mortgaged property was there taken and sold to pay the amount which defendant claimed to be due on the notes. After having been kept in Kansas-about ten days, the plaintiff was brought back to Story county to answer the information. Upon being brought into the justice’s court, he waived examination, and was required to appear and answer at the next term of the district court, his bail
I. This is the second submission of this cause in this court. 55 N. W. Eep. 502. On the first submission a motion of the appellee to strike from the record the bill of- exceptions, and affirm the judgment of the district court, was sustained. A petition for rehearing was filed and sustained. Other motions have been filed, and arguments made, and the cause is again submitted for our determination.
IV. The jury found specially that the plaintiff was not indebted to the defendant on the notes and mortgage in question when the mortgaged property was removed from Story county to Kansas; that the defendant, when he commenced the criminal proceedings, did not have sufficient ground to authorize a reasonably prudent man to believe that plaintiff was guilty of the offense charged; and that the defendant acted with malice in commencing the proceedings. The appellant discusses at considerable length the evidence, and insists that it shows that there was a substantial; balance due him on the mortgage debt when the criminal proceed
Y. The appellant insists with much earnestness that the verdict is not sustained by the evidence, and we are of the opinion that there is much in the record which tends to justify the claim. Some of the testimony of the appellee is contradictory, and to some extent unreasonable. Witnesses testify that he admitted a small balance to be, due the appellant at the time the mortgaged property was taken to Kansas. Much of his testimony is contradicted by that of disinterested witnesses, and there is reason to doubt some of it. But all these matters were before the jury for consideration. Three juries have decided in favor of the appellee, and under long-established and well-known rules of practice we are not authorized to disturb the judgment for want of evidence to sustain the verdict. What we have said disposes of the controlling questions in the case. On