49 Conn. 342 | Conn. | 1881
The plaintiff, a deputy sheriff, sued the defendant, an attorney at law, for fees due him for the service of writs placed in his hands for service by the defendant. The plaintiff claimed that the placing of the writs in his hands for service, constituting a request that he should serve them, raised an implied contract on the part of the defendant to pay his fees for the service. The defendant claimed that in such a ease there was no implied agreement to pay the fees, but that, as he was an attorney, acting for his clients, and they were known to the plaintiff, the clients only were liable to the plaintiff, unless he him
The defendant has no reason to complain of these instructions. If they err at all it is in his favor. Under them the jury must have found that he intended to make himself personally liable. An actual intent to do so was not necessary. Such an intent might be inferred from his conduct. While in one sense the client is the principal and the attorney the agent, and while the attorney is professionally and constantly acting for clients, whose names from the records of the courts and other means of publicity are almost always known ©r may be so, yet there are peculiarities in his case which make it necessary to apply to it with some qualification the general principles of agency. In most cases of agency the principal is what the name imports—the leading person in the transaction. The agent is, as the term implies, a mere subordinate, important only as the representative of the principal; often representing only one principal. An attorney at law, on the other hand, occupies a position of recognized importance in itself, not infrequently of great prominence before the public, in which he often has a large number of clients, his relations to whom are full of detail, and who are little noticed by the public. In these circumstances, if every officer who serves
This is really no departure from the general law of agency. An agent can always bind himself personally where such is his intention. Here it is merely held to be a fair inference from the act of the attorney in placing the
This view is sustained by nearly all the authorities, both English and American. In Walbank v. Quarterman, 3 Com. Bench, 94, Maule, J., says:—“ The inconvenience would be prodigious if it were held that the officer must look to the client for his fees, and there is no_ inconvenience in the other course.” In Judson v. Gray, 11 N. York, 413, the court, in holding that an attorney is not personally liable for the fees of a referee, expresses doubt whether upon the general principles of agency an attorney should be held liable for the fees of an officer, yet says that there are special considerations affecting that question, and that, in view of repeated decisions in that state, it should be considered as settled that an attorney is liable for the fees of an officer in the absence of notice to the contrary. See also Weeks on Attorneys, 232; Scrace v. Whittington, 2 Barn. & Cress., 11; Foster v. Blakelock, 5 id., 328; Robbins v. Bridge, 3 Mees. & Weis., 114; Brewer v. Jones, 16 Exch., 655; Adams v. Hopkins, 5 Johns., 252; Ousterhout v. Day, 9 id., 114; Campbell v. Cothran, 56 N. York, 279; Tarbell v. Dickinson, 3 Cush., 346; Fowle v. Hatch, 43 N. Hamp., 270.
A new trial is not advised.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.