183 Iowa 194 | Iowa | 1917
The plaintiff sues to recover for damages for his alleged wrongful discharge from defendant’s employment, and sets out the written agreement by which defendant engaged his services for one year from September 1, 1914, at the rate of $150 per month. The defendant in answer admits making the contract, and that, on January 7, 1915, it discharged the plaintiff from its service; but alleges that such discharge was justified by the failure of plaintiff to properly perform the work for which he was employed. Many other things are pleaded in defense, much of which is irrelevant or merely argumentative. In so far as they present defensive or issuable matter, they will be considered in the course of this opinion. A counterclaim was also pleaded for the recovery of damages which it alleged it had sustained by plaintiff’s failure to perform his
“For further answer, and by way of affirmative defense, this defendant avers and charges the fact to be that, after the dismissal of the plaintiff from the services of the defendant company, the plaintiff refused to continue in the employ of the defendant company in a clerical capacity at the offered salary of $100 per-month until the first day of September, 1915; that the plaintiff wholly failed to use any diligence in seeking employment elsewhere, after he had1 refused the employment thus offered him by the defendant. However, this defendant avers and charges the fact to be that the plaintiff has been and is now employed in and about Boswell, in the state of New Mexico, as the manager. and superintendent of a fruit fai’m, and that the plaintiff has other business interests to which he has devoted his time and attention, and from which he has derived profit to himself, and for which he in no ways now accounts; that, for all of which reasons, the defendant denies it is indebted to the plaintiff in any amount whatsoever.”
That an employer may discharge an employe, contrary to the terms of his contract, and then plead and prove, by way of affirmative defense to an action for damages, that he offered to retain plaintiff in his service on condition that the latter would accept compensation at a fraction of the contract wage, is so opposed to all reason and authority
The matter found in this division of the answer is not only redundant, but it also is frivolous, and was properly stricken out.
III. The appellant’s contention that whatever plaintiff earned for personal services rendered for others during the remainder of the year after his discharge should be considered in reducing his damages, in case he was found entitled to recover at all, is no doubt, correct; and, as the court so charged, it must be presumed that the jury gave the defendant the benefit of all such deductions as the testimony showed it was entitled to. What other income, if any, the plaintiff derived from rentals, or from buying and selling sheep, or from investments or business enterprises generally, is a matter into which defendant had no right to inquire. Had plaintiff been so fortunate as to discover a rich gold mine in the interval of his nonemployment, proof of the fact would have been wholly immaterial in this case.
It is difficult to understand upon what theory the letters could properly have been excluded. Mr. Main was president and director of the corporation. Indeed, the record seems to indicate that, in a very just sense of the word, he is the corporation, and that it is through and by him that the corporation speaks. It was he who represented it in employing the plaintiff and in discharging him. The letters relate almost exclusively to the matter of the plaintiff’s hiring, to his services and his discharge. They are very pertinent in their bearing upon the merits of the case. They were clearly admissible, and the assignment of error thereon cannot be sustained.
It is finally contended that, in any event, the verdict is excessive in amount. We do not-think so. The jury was fully justified in finding that plaintiff’s discharge was wrongful. It was made when only about four months of the year of employment .had passed. For the remaining eight months, plaintiff’s wages, at the agreed rate, would amount to $1,200. The verdict returned was for $792.20, indicating that the jury had given the appellant the benefit of a reduction of about $400 on account of plaintiff’s earnings from other sources. This was a fairly conservative estimate, and the verdict must be permitted to stand.
The merits of’ the controversy are clearly with the appellee. Other questions suggested by counsel are governed by the conclusions already announced, and require no fur