100 Wis. 678 | Wis. | 1898
There was evidence tending to show that, defendant was represented by one Ganing in making the trade with plaintiff. The scope of the agent’s authority was called in question. On that the court was requested to submit to the jury the following question: “Was Ganing authorized by the defendant to buy the plaintiff’s property for cash or was his authority limited to trading of land stock? ” The request was refused, and that is assigned as error. The ruling was proper because of the form of the question, if for no other reason. It called for a direct answer in either the affirmative or negative. Such an answer would not have determined anything. The question, if submitted and answered would have been, in effect, that the agent was authorized to do one or the other of two things, but which of the two would have remained undetermined. Questions for a special verdict should be plain, single, and each so worded as to cover some fact in issue, or some fact properly issuable under the pleadings, and requisite to a determination of the
Error is further assigned on the refusal to give certain general instructions as to the law governing the right of plaintiff to recover. Such instructions were not applicable to a special verdict, and were properly rejected on that ground. Where there is such a verdict, the right to recover being one of law to be determined by the court on the facts found, instructions may properly be limited to the particular questions, and no general instructions whatever be given. Burns v. North Chicago R. M. Co. 60 Wis. 541.
It is further assigned as error that the plaintiff’s wife was permitted to testify, against objection, to a conversation between herself and defendant, by which means she was able to state, substantially, what her view of the contract was between plaintiff and defendant. No theory is apparent as to what influenced the trial court to permit that evidence, unless it be that the rule applied, allowing a husband or wife who is the agent of the other in respect to a business transaction, to testify thereto within the scope of such agency. That she was incompetent to testify on any other ground is too clear to require consideration or discussion. To render her competent to testify on such ground, her authority as. agent, and the scope of it, should have been made to appear, and her testimony have been confined within that scope. No authority whatever is shown here for plaintiff’s wife to act as his agent, except the mere fact that she was “ sent to.
By the Court.— The judgment of the circuit court for Milwaukee county is reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial.