Jones v. Tucker

Citations

• 26 Del. 422
• 84 A. 1012
• 3 Boyce 422
• 1912 Del. LEXIS 51

Syllabus

<p>1. Contracts—Nature—“Express Contract”—“Implied Contract.”</p> <p>A contract is an agreement between two or more persons for a sufficient consideration to do or not to do a certain thing. It is not necessary that it be in writing, and it may be express or implied. It is express when the terms of the agreement are stated in so many words, and implied where one party receives benefits from the other under- such circumstances that the law presumes a promise on the part of the person benefited to pay a reasonable price for the same.</p> <p>2. Work and Labor—Services in Family—Presumptions.</p> <p>Where one person takes another into his family and makes such person a member thereof, any services performed by the person so taken will be presumed to have been gratuitous, with no intention to charge for the same; but such presumption may be rebutted by proof of an express or implied promise to pay.</p> <p>3. Limitation of Actions—Acknowledgment of Debt.</p> <p>The three-year statute of limitations applicable to an action for services does not apply when the person charged has acknowledged the existence of his indebtedness within three years prior to the commencement of the suit.</p> <p>4. Trial—Argument of Counsel—Appeal to Sympathy.</p> <p>In a housekeeper’s action for her wages, it was error for her attorney to travel outside the evidence in his argument and state that she was a poor woman and must collect the claim or go to the poorhouse.</p> <p>5. New Trial—Grounds—Argument of Counsel.</p> <p>A statement by counsel for plaintiff in argument that his client was a poor woman and must collect her claim or go to the poorhouse, which the court, on objection, directed the jury to disregard, whereupon counsel withdrew it, was not ground for new trial, in the absence of anything in the verdict to show that the jury were influenced by it; the presumption being that they obeyed the court’s instruction to disregard it.</p>