20 Mo. App. 286 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1886
delivered the opinion of the court.
The petition states that the defendant owes the plaintiffs $322.53 for goods sold and delivered by the plaintiffs to the defendant, according to an itemized account filed with the petition. The answer is a general ■denial.
I. After the plaintiffs’ counsel had made their
II. According to the bill of exceptions, the plaintiffs gave evidence tending to show “that the defendant, John Maguire, was one of two trustees under the will of George E. Taylor, deceased; and as such owned certain hotel property in the city of St. Louis, known as Barnum’s Hotel. That prior to the first day of March, 1883, Messrs. Cobb and Hean were the lessees of said property, and conducted a hotel therein under the name of Barnum’s Hotel.” That there were numerous boarders and guests in the house; that said Cobb and Hean abandoned the hotel and left the city, occasioning much confusion among the boarders and guests of the hotel. That many of the boarders and guests left, but a large portion remained. That on or about the second day of April, 1883, the defendant, as trustee, put the said Trumpbour in charge of said hotel as manager, for the purpose of carrying on the same until other arrangements could be made; that thereafter, until about the first day of February, 1884, the said Trumpbour managed and carried on said hotel under the name of “Barnum’s Hotel.” That from time to time during that
The defendant contends that there ivas here no evidence to go to the jury in support of the plaintiffs’ petition, and he bases his contention on the ground that there is no evidence disclosed in the above recitals tha* the defendant ever authorized Trumpbour to purchaf- the goods sued on, or any other goods on the credit ol the defendant, or to contract any debts in the exercise of his agency as manager of the hotel. We should say. that the defendant’s instruction for a non-suit should have been given if it were not for the last recital in the • record that, “plaintiffs introduced other evidence tending to establish the allegations in their 'pleadings herein ” This general recital puts an end to the argument that the court should have non-suited the plaintiffs.
“5. The jurors are further ^instructed that to entitle plaintiffs to recover, they must believe from the evidence that the defendant authorized the said Trumpbour to purchase for him the goods specified in the petition ; therefore, if they believe that no such authority was given to the said Trumpbour by the defendant, they must find a verdict for the defendant.”
Upon the record, as made up, it is clear that we can not say that the court erred in refusing this instruction. The petition alleges that certain goods were sold and delivered by the plaintiffs to the defendant, and contains, no averment of the agency of any one for the defendant. The bill of exceptions recites that the plaintiffs introduced other evidence tending to show the allegations in their pleadings. What that evidence was, we can only conjecture, but we certainly can not hold that the court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that the plaintiffs could not recover unless they should believe that the defendant contracted by a duly authorized agent, when the record distinctly admits that there was other . evidence tending to show his liability, and the inference is not excluded that he may have been liable on other grounds. It would have been error to give the instruction, because it would have been a violation of the rule, oft repeated, that it is error for the court to single out a single hypothesis in the evidence, and leaving out of view the others, to tell the jury that if they should find that hypothesis to be true, they should render a verdict for the one party or the other. Iron Mountain Bank v. Murdock, 62 Mo. 70; Koenig v. Life Ass’n, 3 Mo. App. 596.
IY. It is clear that there is nothing in the instructions given which affords grorind for reversing the judgment. The first and second, so far as they were against the defendant, merely cautioned the jury that if he was liable on other grounds it was immaterial whether
The judgment oí the circuit court must be affirmed. It is so ordered.