Hobbs v. Solis
Hobbs v. Solis
Opinion of the Court
In this suit the plaintiff seeks to recover the contract price for putting lightning rods on defendant’s farm buildings. It is not disputed that he put on the rods as claimed, but defendant testified that he agreed to put
The evidence which was excepted to consisted in the defendant’s statement, given in detail, of a conversation with the plaintiff in which the latter solicited the job of putting up the rod, and the defendant’s assent to his doing'so at the agreed price of forty dollars, and of the subsequent transaction when the signature^ to the order or contract was obtained. On- this last occasion defendant testified that the paper was presented to him as a recommendation to others of the job; that plaintiff said he had taken it very low, and he wanted it in regard to that; that defendant could not read very well, and did not read the paper at all, and only a little of it, ,in regal'd to its being satisfactory was read to him; that plaintiff professed to be in a hurry at the time. The plaintiff gave no evidence in denial of these statements.
The judge submitted this evidence to the jury under a charge which would permit them to find from it that the paper was obtained by fraud. He also charged the jury as follows: “The facts and circumstances, outside of the contents, will sometimes have an effect upon this question of fraud. If a party cannot read, and that is known to the other side, then, as a matter of course, that would have some bearing upon the exact limits of the care which a party should take in signing the paper. If a party should present a paper and say he is in a great hurry, that he cannot stop for the man to read it, but he will state the contents; if he does not say that, but is in a position or situation where the other party naturally and fairly sup
We cannot agree with the plaintiff that there was any error in receiving the evidence, or any thing unfair in the charge. The case is within the previous decisions of this court: Gibbs v. Linabury, 22 Mich., 479; Anderson v. Walter, 34 Mich., 113. Whether the evidence ought to have satisfied the jury we are not called upon to say; but the case was submitted to them under a very fair charge— only a small portion of which we have given — and there was competent evidence to sustain their finding, and also, as we think, to sustain all that was said by the judge in his statement of the case to the jury.
The judgment will be affirmed, with costs.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Harrison Hobbs v. Samuel Solis
- Status
- Published