122 Mo. App. 654 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1907
Defendants are husband and wife and this action was instituted to recover damages from them, for alienating the affections of plaintiff’s husband who was the son of the defendants and who is known in this record as Garfield, his Christian name. There was a judgment in the trial court for the plaintiff.
The case is before us the second time. It is reported in 114 Mo. App. 24. By reference thereto, it will be found that plaintiff, a young woman nineteen years of age, and a son of defendants, twenty-two years of age, were married and came immediately to' live with defendants who were elderly people living on a farm, plaintiff
The evidence at the last trial, with an important exception, was substantially the same as at the first. There were some changes made by the plaintiff in portions of her testimony, the motive for which is strongly impugned by defendants’ counsel, and, it seems to us, not wholly without cause. There was also some evidence consisting of conversations with defendants which is of little moment in the view we have taken of the case. There was also some evidence of statements of plaintiff’s husband made out of the presence of defendants which we consider to be harmful and reversible error. [Westlake v. Westlake, 34
On the first appeal, it was with much misgiving that I arrived at the conclusion that a case had been made for the jury. At this time, in view of plaintiff’s written admission of her conduct towards these defendants in a note addressed to them, which was not in evidence at the first trial, and was only referred to as containing an invitation to defendants to visit her; in view of her own testimony at the last trial and considering that the defendants are the father and mother of plaintiff’s husband and the absolute necessity for her to show that they were actuated by malice, rather than an honest interest in the welfare of their'son, we have concluded that no case has been made.
What is malice? As known to the law, it is a wrongful act done intentionally, without just cause or excuse. [Goetz v. Ambs, 27 Mo. 28.] It is not merely doing an act intentionally which is wrongful, but it must have been known to be wrongful. [Trauerman v. Lippincott, 39 Mo. App. 478.] We understand this view to have met the approval of the Supreme Court in McNamara v. Transit Co., 182 Mo. 676, though the court approves the form of an instruction which submits the act as “intentionally done;” holding that that would indicate to the jury that the party charged knew that the act was wrong and that he had no just cause or excuse for doing it. So, therefore to make out a case against these defendants the evidence must not only show that they did the acts which plaintiff insists caused the alienation of their
In considering whether such showing was made, it is of the greatest importance to keep in view that the defendants were the mother and father of plaintiff’s husband and of the plaintiff’s conduct towards them, for her conduct may explain or account for their actions. And it is also necessary, from the fact that proof of malice need not consist of open and affirmative declarations, but may be made out by conduct, and acts. In order to properly characterize one’s actions or conduct, it is necessary to consider the circumstances, situation and relationship which exist. Thus, as affecting a married couple, acts and conduct of a, stranger which would be justly characterized as those of a malicious intermeddler, might be but the natural impulse of the parents which would be set down to their credit by all right thinking people. This is the view of all the authorities which we have found where the relationship of the defendants has been considered. [Hutcheson v. Peck, 5 Johns. 196; Tucker v. Tucker, 74 Miss. 93; Payne v. Williams, 4 Baxt. 583; Rice v. Rice, 104 Mich. 171; Burnett v. Burkhead, 21 Ark. 77; Huling v. Huling, 32 Ill. App. 519; Smith v. Lyke, 13 Hun 204; Brown v. Brown, 124 N. C. 19.] In the case first cited, Ch. J. Kent said that, “If the defendant did not stand in the relation of father to the plaintiff’s wife I should not perhaps be inclined to interfere with the verdict. But that relationship gives rise to a new and peculiar interest. ... A father’s house is always open to his children; and whether they be married or unmarried it is still to them a refuge from evil, and a consolation in distress. Natural affection establishes and consecrates this asylum, and according to Lord Coke, it is ‘nature’s profession to assist, maintain and console the child.’ I should require, therefore,
Every legal presumption is that the parent acted for the best interest of the child. [Reed v. Reed, 6 Ind. App. 317.] Can it be said that if a parent shall advise his child in good faith, he does so at the risk of financial ruin? “It would be strange, indeed, if parents, under peril of legal consequences, must keep silence under such circumstances, or must clothe in terms of respect their expressions of outraged feeling, when even strangers would be excused for speaking with freedom.” [White v. Ross, 47 Mich. 172.] So it has been ruled that a
Plaintiff lived with defendants at their home from the next day after their marriage, April 1st, until August 18th, except a few weeks that she was employed to assist her husband’s married sister who was sick. On August 18th, she and Garfield went to housekeepingin the village about a mile distant. The case made to show the guilt of these defendants as chárged by her, consists principally, according to her own testimony, of three conversations. The first occurred on June 20th; the second, on July 5th, and the third just before she went to housekeeping in August. On June 20th, she says she heard. Mrs. Leavell tell Mr. Leavell just before dinner that she (plaintiff) was so disagreeable — that she had been pouting and sulking all morning. And at dinner that Mrs. Leavell said to her, “I guess the cat has got your tongue to-day; you haven’t said anything.” And she said that she did not feel very well and did not feel like talking. After dinner Garfield and his mother went into the cellar to get some fruit cans and she went into a room above just in time to hear her name and to hear
The next occurrence, July 4th, she says she overheard Garfield say to his mother (referring to the other married children) that “to-morrow, Oora and her husband, Tommie and his wife, and me and my wife, and they both sneeringly laughed when he said me and my wife, will take dinner with you to-morrow, and he says, ‘It will be the last 4th of July I will stop toith you/ and she said, ‘I should think so.’ ” She stated that Mr. Leavell was over the fence near by. Further on in her testimony she stated this incident again, in which she had heard Garfield saying that, “It will be the last 4th of July I will spend with, her ” and Mrs. Leavell replying, “Well, L think so.”
The next complaint, in August just before the housekeeping began, she was in her room upstairs at night, while Garfield and his mother were in the kitchen below and again she heard her name spoken, but she could not distinguish in what connection. Garfield came up and next morning when he and she came down to breakfast Mrs. Leavell told her she had heard her crying in the night and she said it was because Garfield had told her that she was to go to housekeeping. Mrs. Leavell then asked her what she thought about going to housekeeping, and that she made no reply. When Garfield said, “I will get a house and get her away just as soon as I can.”
The foregoing is the chief matter to establish the defendants’ guilt of the charge made against them until the housekeeping began. The evidence thence on, on plaintiff’s part consists in an effort to show how Garfield neglected her during and after her confinement and finally she, on account thereof, went to a hotel in the village to work. The only reference to these defendants is that they did not go to see her, Mrs. Leavell saying she thought it better not to do so. All other testimony as to the conduct of defendants while she lived with them may be summed up in her statement that they treated her “slightingly,” or with “coldness,” by saying that she was “stubborn and didn’t do things nicely.” And Mrs. •Leavell complained that she should stay in the house more; “such things as that.”
We do not think, even considering this evidence disconnected from what we shall refer to as appearing in other parts of plaintiff’s testimony in her own behalf, that there is any showing of co-operation to do a wrong
The first complaint as to hearing some disconnected words on the 20th of June between Garfield and his mother in the cellar. There is nothing more than conjecture that these words referred to plaintiff. And when Mrs. Leavell came upstairs and found plaintiff, as her inquiry shows, in her customary mood, asked, “What are you crying about now?” and received in reply plaintiff’s accusations against her. It was at this time that Mr. Leavell came into the room and Mrs. Leavell told him plaintiff was again quarrelling and he then stated “that if she could not do any better than that she could leave and work out awhile,” and that if he had known what he then knew Garfield should not have married her, and that he should not get anything if he went with her, but, if he stayed with them, he could get what the other children got. This, at most, was but the expression of impatience with plaintiff’s conduct, and was a meaningless exhibition of anger. That he did not mean to force her from the house or to separate her is conclusively shown by his not doing so and by what he after-wards did. If every impatient threat of a father to an annoying child should be made the ground of an action against him the courts would not find time to listen to much else. In White v. Ross, 47 Mich. 172, the father said to his son-in-law in a fit of anger that if his daughter went with him he would shoot them both, yet his subsequent conduct showed that this was not meant, as he agreed that if she would remain at home a week and then decided to leave she could do so. And before the week expired she decided to abandon him, yet Judge
Plaintiff made two widely different statements .of her second complaint as to the conversation overheard about the 4th of July dinner. The second one of these amounts, at most, to a statement from Garfield that he would not spend another 4th of July with plaintiff and Mrs. Leavell’s acquiescence, thereby leaving the inference that he did not intend to continue to live with her, certainly does not show that Mr. and Mrs. Leavell were wickedly, wantonly and maliciously instigating him to leave her. Mr. Leavell, who, as already stated, the evidence shows to be hard of hearing, was in another lot, several feet away, and ought not to be charged with cooperating in the assent of Mrs. Leavell to Garfield’s statement. There is no pretense that he heard the remark. But it is somewhat remarkable that in her first statement of the occurrence, she said that she heard Garfield say to his mother that it was the last 4th of July that, “I will stop with you;” which, manifestly, could not bear on the case at all.
The third matter of complaint relates to her going to housekeeping. As she told of this complaint on the first trial, it amounted to not the slightest consequence as regards the charge against the defendants. She then repeatedly stated that Mrs. Leavell stated that “we” (that is, she and Garfield) should go to housekeeping. But as told on the last trial, she put in that “she”
We are aware that while separate acts or separate lines of conduct may not show malice, a number of acts, considered together, may show a purpose which would not appear when considered separately. But in this case-the evidence fails considered in either way.
It is apparent from the testimony given by the plaintiff as to what these defendants said to her that she quarrelled with them, though they were old people and were sheltering her in their own house, and she affirmatively admitted that she did so, though she said they were the cause. Not only that, but after the child was born, she wrote them the note above referred to, which we regard as a confession of her own wrong. And as fully explaining the conduct of these defendants of which she complains-. It reads: “Father and Mother Leavell: I write asking your pardon and forgiveness for all I have said and done to cause any hard feeling. Please come and see our baby. Pearl.” Furthermore, she admits that Mr. Leavell procured a house for her and Garfield and moved them into it and furnished them with a housekeeping outfit and that he afterwards bought a house and moved them into it and that during all the time they were housekeeping defendants supplied the table. She further admitted on the morning of their moving, the old gentleman advised them to get along peaceably, not to quarrel, and that the way to be happy was to live in peace. In the face of all the evidence in her behalf, it is incredible that defendants could have been the wicked and- malicious conspirators conspiring and designedly forming plans for the malicious purpose of separating her from Garfield. The testimony as given by plaintiff is greatly discredited by the standpoint from which she viewed her rights and those of these defendants. The whole face of her testimony shows that she thought the
In disposing of the case, we have not considered the denials made by defendants of the charges which plaintiff; sought to sustain. Nor of the testimony of many witnesses in their behalf tending to show their conduct to have been blameless. We have only taken into consideration those things in the entire record which have been claimed to support the plaintiff and we find that she has failed to make out her ease and hence we reverse the judgment. Broaddus, P. J., concurs; Johnson, J., believes the judgment should be reversed and- the cause remanded, and therefore dissents as to reversing the judgment without remanding.