Foster v. United Zinc Companies
Foster v. United Zinc Companies
Opinion of the Court
Plaintiff recovered judgment, as a result of a jury trial, for $2000' on' account of services rendered for the defendant as an' attorney at law in Massachusetts and the defendant has appealed.
When the case was called for trial the defendant sought to obtain a continuance because of its alleged inability to complete the taking of depositions in Massachusetts hut the testimony fully supports the action of the trial court in refusing to grant the continuance. There can be no question but that if the defendant had been reasonably diligent the deposition could have been filed in time for use in the trial of the case, besides the plaintiff had a copy of most of the testimony desired, and offered the defendant the use of that.
It appears that before this suit was brought in Jasper county for $2500 the plaintiff sent a bill to defendant for $1000 and he may also have undertaken to commence suit in Massachusetts for that amount. Before sending the bill to the defendant one of its officers had suggested to him that he make his bill as low as possible because the defendant claimed to be in such financial circumstances as that it had little available cash. At the close of the testimony the court instructed the jury in behalf of the plaintiff that if he was induced by the defendant to render a bill for less than his services were reasonably worth to effect a prompt payment and to avoid litigation and expenses in the collection thereof and the jury found that the reasonable value of his services exceeded the amount for which he then rendered his bill then the plaintiff by rendering such account was not prechided from recovering the reasonable value of his services. This instruction was proper (Webster v. Loeb, 112 Mo. App. 139, 86 S. W. 463; McDonald v. Mossman, 181 Mo. App. 475, 479, 168 S. W. 816) except that there is no testimony that plaintiff rendered the bill to avoid litigation, but the defend
Numerous other points are suggested in defendant’s brief and they are all as equally devoid of merit as the above.
We shall place our decision in this ease upon another and wholly different point from those discussed above or suggested by the parties to this appeal. In the case of Johnson v. Amburson Hydraulic Construction Co., 188 Mo. App. 105, 173 S. W. 1081, 1086, Judge Farrington, speaking for this court concerning the duty of appellants under our rule requiring an abstract of record to be filed here, stated “that the day of judgment for some litigant whose attorney has been remiss in his duty is not far distant. ’ ’ That prophetic day of judgment is now here for the appellant in this case. On the front cover of the printed docket for our April call of this term of court, in which this case appears, special attention is called to our rule 15 on this subject, quoting its material provisions. We now have before us in this case a printed record of 386 pages which may have well been reduced to a very few pages and fully presented the questions raised here. The bill of exceptions is printed in full in the exact form in which it left the stenographer, exhibits consisting of letters containing elaborate and extensive letterheads and addresses to the party to whom the letter is written, together with the formal closing parts thereof are printed in full, adding nothing to the context. The plaintiff
The judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.