Kahn v. Cole
Kahn v. Cole
Opinion of the Court
This suit was brought by the appellees against appellant to recover *557 the value of certain personal property which they had stored with him as warehouseman, and which they alleged he had unlawfully sold, in violation of the contract of storage. On the verdict of the jury jddgment was entered in their favor for $161.
The trial court erred in this ruling. When it was shown that the original of this receipt was not in existence, secondary evidence was admissible to prove its contents, and a typewritten carbon copy, made at the same time with the original, was admissible for that purpose. McDonald v. Hanks, 52 Tex. Civ. App. 140, 113 S. W. 604; Kolp v. Brazer, 161 S. W. 900.
“A receipt issued by a warehouseman, stating the amount and quantity of goods received, and also the conditions under which same are to be stored and held, is more than a receipt, and is in fact a contract fixing the rights of the parties, and parol evidence is inadmissible to vary its terms in the absence of fraud or mistake.”
Paterson & Co. v. Railway, 126 S. W. 336; Union Storage Co. v. Speck, 194 Pa. 126, 45 Atl. 48; Doyle v. Offutt & Blackburn, 135 Ky. 296, 122 S. W. 156; Southern Bell Telephone Co. v. Smith, 129 Ga. 558, 59 S. E. 215; Leonard v. Dunton, 51 Ill. 482, 99 Am. Dec. 568; Tarbell v. Farmers’ Elevator Co., 44 Minn. 471, 47 N. W. 152; Stewart v. Phœnix Furniture Co., 9 Lea (77 Tenn.) 104.
“The value of my pictures would be worth $500 to me, not to have the money, but the feeling that I have for my mother and my little dead son and also the picture of them. It would be worth that much to me the way I am situated. It is the actual value that I placed on those pictures. With regard to the value I place on my mother’s picture, well if I had the value of it I would say $500 for that picture, because I was the only child she had. I do not know what my father’s picture would be worth, $100 to me anyway. The value of the picture of my two little girls taken together would be about $300, because I haven’t got other pictures of them when they were small. * * * I had some bedclothing in there that my little baby died on, and I don’t know the value of that. You see it is not the value of the clothes as to what else there was in those household goods that were of especial sentimental value. There was my dead mother’s featherbed. * * * I also had the feather pillow that my baby died on, and the pillow ease which had a sentimental value. There were other articles besides the pictures of my father and mother and children that had a sentimental value.”
This was not the proper measure of damage for the loss of property of this kind. The rule is thus stated by the Supreme Court of Mississippi in Louisville & N. Ry. Co. v. Stewart, 78 Miss. 600, 29 South. 394:
“The court excluded the hearsay testimony of Mrs. Stewart as to the value of the oil portraits, and there was no evidence before the jury as to cost. Nor was there any as to what it would cost to replace or restore them; nor any of any kind except that she was allowed to answer as to what they were worth to her from the associations connected with them, they being family portraits, their purely sentimental value, in other words. This is not competent. The true rule in such cases is not to inquire as to market value, since such articles have no market value, but to show the ‘actual value to him who owns the portraits, taking into account the cost, the practicability, and expense of replacing it, and such other considerations as in the particular case affect their value to the owner.’ Green v. Railroad Co., 128 Mass. 221; Railway Co. v. Nickelson, 61 Tex. 550; Hutchinson on Carriers, 770 (b).”
For the errors discussed, this cause is reversed and remanded for a new trial.
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Reference
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