36 Mich. 327 | Mich. | 1877
Tbe company is a corporation, and McAlister, claiming; that it owed him a certain balance for services as superin
It appears also, that F. I. Kellogg, who was treasurer, 'Was constituted'“ consulting director,” “with whom the superantendent was to advise.” McAlister was allowed to recover 1:six hundred -and-eighty-seven dollars and fourteen cents, and '<the company ‘allege error.
To prove that there was a balance due him from the Company, and to establish its amount, he was allowed, after some preliminary testimony in regard to the time he was occupied in the company’s service, to introduce, against the objection of the company, the following paper:
-“ $622.21. Kalamazoo, May 29th, 1874.
“This is to certify that the Kalamazoo Novelty Manufacturing Company is indebted to N. M. McAlister, late superintendent of said company, in the sum of six hundred and twenty-two dollars and twenty-one cents for balance of salary. F. I. Kellogg,
“Treasurer Kalamazoo Novelty Company.”
No account of McAlister had been presented to the company or board of directors. He had asked for a settlement but there had been -no audit. He swore he could not fix the amount due him except by this paper. The instrument was introduced and received as an admission of the company of the fact of indebtedness and of the amount.
This we thin’k was error. It could not be entitled to reception in evidence as an admission of the corporation without its being made to appear that Kellogg had authority to make it as an act of the corporation.—Green’s Brice, 425 and note. There was no direct evidence of such authority. No by-law or resolution conveying the power was shown.
His position as consulting director implied no power to
Such duties would regularly fall on the board of directors, and -the evidence in the ease goes to strengthen the inference that -such was the fact here. The resolution relied on by McAlister, tends to show that it was for the board to speak on the part of the company concerning his wages, and not the treasurer, and he testified that it was the board who called on him to quit.
In the progress of the trial the secretary’s book of records was produced, and some three pages of its contents were admitted in evidence.
On submitting the case -to the jury, the judge allowed them, against the objection of counsel for the corporation, to take with them to their room, the book in question, and directed them to look only on page forty-four. The record is not so framed a-s to enable u-s to say whether the court was warranted in-confining the jury to one of the three pages of the book which -were given in evidence, or not.
The other questions cease to be of any importance in the case.
The judgment should be reversed, with costs, and a new trial ordered.