26 Ga. App. 782 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1921
(After stating the foregoing facts.) The evidence in the case was hardly sufficient to demand a verdict for the plaintiff, but it was sufficient to raise the inference that, as to the cottonseed business for that year, there was a partnership between the two defendants. The first letter written by W. C. Mason, one of the defendants, in reply to a letter of the plaintiff, asking that it be favored again with shipments by him for the ensuing year, expressly stated that “ Mr. W. V. Brownlee is interested with me at Adams Park this year, but we will use the same contract as last year.” In reply to this letter the plaintiff wrote, “ I note your statement that Mr. W. V. Brownlee is interested with you,” and asked how Mason wished the contract to be made, and said, “We shall, of course, keep in touch with Mr. Brownlee and render him all the assistance possible.” In reply to this letter Mason returned the contract with the plaintiff, signed only by himself, and made no reference to Brownlee or any relationship with him for the ensuing cotton season, and soon thereafter wrote a letter asking the plaintiff to send W. V. Brownlee “ $50.00 to start off the seed business.” The plaintiff’s contention, under this evidence, was that as to the cottonseed business at Ettrick for that year Mason
These principles of law are well settled and are founded on commercial honesty and fair dealing, and as the plaintiff contended that it transacted the business with both defendants on the faith that they were partners in the cottonseed business, on the theory of estoppel by their declarations in connection with that business, and as this was the controlling, and really the only, issue in the case, we think the learned Judge should have presented to the Jury the law applicable to that issue, and not confined his charge on the subject of partnership to § 3158, supra.
It is true that where the trial Judge gives instructions in general terms on broad and controlling principles applicable to the evidence, such instructions will be sufficient in the absence of a request for a more specific instruction, and that if the issues are
Judgment reversed.