125 Ga. 222 | Ga. | 1906
(After stating the foregoing facts.)
Where declarations of an agent are admissible, the better practice is to require proof of agency before admitting them in evidence. In any event, they ought not to be received in evidence before proof of the agency, unless the party tendering them offers in good faith to supplement them by other and independent evidence of the agency; and if such offer is not made good, the declarations ought to be excluded from the consideration of the jury. Abel v. Jarratt, 100 Ga. 732. In the present case, although evidence of negotiations with an alleged agent and his sayings may have been admitted without proper foundation by proof of the existence of the agency, yet, under the whole evidence, there was some testimony from which the jury might have inferred the existence of an agency. Thus, there was evidence that, shortly after the negotiations between the plaintiff and the alleged agent in regard to the purchase of the fruit, the person claimed to be the principal came to the property in company with the alleged agent and made an examination with reference to a purchase. And though, while on the stand as a witness, the alleged principal denied the existence of any agency or authority on the part of the alleged agent to bind him, he admitted that he had telegraphed to such person to examine the fruit and give him an opinion as to its value. The object, too, was not to bind the alleged principal by the acts of the alleged agent, but to show that the plaintiff was instrumental in