75 Md. 162 | Md. | 1892
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This suit was brought to recover damages for a personal injury received hy the appellant whilst in the service of the appellee. The appellant was a blacksmith, and in the discharge of his duties had occasion to use a steam trip-hammer owned by the railroad company. One of the housings of this hammer was insecurely
A proper understanding of the questions involved requires a brief statement of the material facts disclosed by the record.
These releases are the ones relied on in the second plea. We can discover ño error in the Court’s ruling on the demurrer to that plea, and no point has been made with reference to that ruling in the brief of the appellant’s counsel.
The replication first filed to the second plea avers that the appellant became a member of the Relief Association upon the faith of. the statements made in article eight of the constitution. That the railroad company did not hear all the expenses necessary to the proper management of the affairs of the Association, and that it did not contribute the whole- of the interest received from the one hundred thousand dollars to lessen the contributions of the members; and that the company had not guaranteed the faithful and true performance of the Association’s obligations, as it was required to do hy the Act of Assembly incorporating the Association, and that'^by reason of the defendant’s default or misrepresentation in the premises, the said papers cannot have the effect of releasing the defendant from the claims of the plaintiff sought to he enforced hy this action.”
The Court was clearly right in sustaining the demurrer to this replication. The replication does not aver that the releases were obtained hy fraud. If it was designed to impeach them on that ground it does so, at most, merely inferentially. It seeks to avoid them, not because any fraud was practised in procuring them, but because of an alleged partial failure of some of the inducements
After the Court had sustained the demurrer, the plaintiff filed another replication, alleging in the usual form, that the releases had been obtained by the fraud of the railroad company. Upon the issue made on the traverse of this replication the question of fraud was properly and distinctly raised. It thereupon became incumbent on the appellant to show that these releases had been procured by the fraud of the defendant; but the only evidence adduced was ruled by the Court below to he legally insufficient to sustain the replication. This ruling is brought before us by the second exception in the record taken to the granting of the second instruction heretofore alluded to. In support of this replication the plaintiff proved that the releases were not read to him, and that he could not read English; that he
■ Now, in all this there is not the faintest suggestion that the agents of the railroad company or the officers of the Relief Association knew, or had reason to believe, that the appellant could not read English; or that they made any statement or held out any inducement which influenced him to sign the releases without inquiring as to their contents. There is rio pretence that they concealed anything from him which they were bound to communicáte, or that they practised any imposition or deception
Inasmuch as this conclusion is decisive against the plaintiff’s right to recover it becomes unnecessary to
The judgment will he affirmed, and it is so ordered.
Judgment affirmed, with costs in this Oourt, and in the Oourt below.