Ralston v. Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co.

Citations

• 267 Pa. 278
• 110 A. 336
• 1920 Pa. LEXIS 845

Syllabus

<p>Negligence — Release of damages — Husband and wife — Husband as agent — Family relationship — Evidence—Witness to release— After-discovered evidence — Reducing amount of verdict — Practice, C. P. — Practice, Supreme Court — Petition for new trial filed on appeal.</p> <p>1. Where in an action by a husband and wife against a street railway company to recover damages for injuries to the wife, defendant sets up as a defense a release executed by the husband and wife, the court will not hold that the husband was the agent of the wife in the matter of the execution of the release, and that, having stood silent, she is bound by his acts, where the evidence for the wife, although contradicted, tends to show that the negotiations leading up to the release were carried on by the husband, and not by her; that, at the time of the actual execution of the paper, the wife said she was ill in bed, as a result of the accident; that she wrote her signature where designated by her husband, when the paper was so folded she could not see its contents; and that she was informed by defendant’s agent that the document was a simple receipt for money, and had no idea that it was a release. To so hold would be apt to prove destructive of the family relationship, which the law always sedulously guards.</p> <p>2. In such case, the evidence showed that the release was witnessed by the 'signature of a woman, who, the wife testified, was dead. Her statement was accepted as true, and the case was submitted to the jury, who returned a verdict for $3,000 in favor of the wife. The court subsequently directed a new trial “unless the plaintiff [the wife] within ten days files a stipulation that she will accept in full satisfaction of her claim the sum of $2,000......to be paid within thirty days, after notice of the filing of said stipulation......If said stipulation is filed, and payment of said amount with interest, from the date of trial, is not made...... within thirty days, then judgment to be e