156 Mo. App. 170 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1911
This is a suit for damages said to have accrued to plaintiff through the alleged wrongful conduct of defendant in revoking his agency and appropriating a newspaper route theretofore occupied by him to its use. The verdict and judgment were for defendant and plaintiff prosecutes the appeal.
Defendant corporation owns and publishes a daily newspaper in the city of St. Louis under the name of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and plaintiff has for many years pursued the occupation of selling and delivering newspapers on Route No. 80 in St. Louis. It appears defendant has parceled the city into districts for the purpose of selling and delivering its paper and designated by number the various routes therein canvassed by its agents. About March, 1896, one Burtseher was defendant’s agent and carrier on Route No. 80 and as such supplied a list of about seventy-five patrons with its paper during six days in the week and about seventy with the Sunday issue thereof. Under the arrangement between defendant and Burtseher, defendant furnished its paper for six days in the week to him at one-half cent per copy and the Sunday issue at two and one-half cents each, with authority to Burtseher to dispose of the paper issued during the secular days of the week at one cent per copy and for that on the Sabbath at five cents each. One-half of the .amounts thus collected was re
Plaintiff insists the privilege which he obtained in 1896 from Burtscher at an expenditure of $45.46 is a valuable one, as it yielded a considerable profit each week, and instituted this suit on the theory, we believe, that he had an interest in Route No. 80, the list of subscribers and the good-will of his patrons, which defendant was not at liberty to divest, without first compensating him therefor. The mere fact that jfiaintiff paid an indebtedness of $45.46 of Burtscher, the former carrier, to defendant as a consideration for the assignment of Burtscher’s privilege to him in March, 1896, is
In so far as the term of the agency is concerned, it would suggest a perpetual right, as no time whatever
In this view, the court should have directed a finding for defendant, but as the jury returned a verdict for it, the result of the trial is a proper one, and we are, therefore, relieved of the duty of reviewing the instructions given and refused. On the case revealed by all of the evidence, the judgment is for the right party and should be affirmed. It is so ordered.