Willamette Casket Co. v. McGoldrick

Citations

• 10 Wash. 229
• 38 P. 1021
• 1894 Wash. LEXIS 195

Syllabus

<p>PARTNERSHIP — LIABILITY OF SILENT PARTNER — EVIDENCE — ADMISSIONS — INSTRUCTIONS.</p> <p>In an action to recover judgment against defendant as a silent partner in a firm to which plaintiff had sold goods, a contract of dissolution of a prior partnership between defendant and the person in whose name the business was later carried on is admissible in evidence for the purpose of showing defendant’s joint ownership in the goods, as a basis of further proof tending to show partnership, and the general admission of the instrument in evidence is not error unless the court refused, upon request, to limit its efiect to the matter of ownership.</p> <p>In an action to subject defendant to liability as a partner in a business, the relationship being denied by him, and the only evidence tending to establish it being proof of his joint ownership in the property, and of alleged admissions on his part of the partnership, it is error to refuse defendant’s request for a charge to the jury that “ a community of interests in money or property, or both, used in carrying on a business, does not of itself constitute a partnership in such business. There must be some joint adventure and agreement to share in the profits of the undertaking ; and though you should find that the deceased Mahoney, in the business in question by him carried on, used money or property, or both money and property of the defendant McGoldrick, that fact would not constitute the defendant a partner in the business, and would neither confer upon him the rights, or subject him to the liabilities, of a partner therein.”</p> <p>In an action which seeks to charge defendant as a silent partner, not as a partner by holding out, the introduction of proof tending to show that he has made admissions of the partnership, but not to plaintiff or anyone representing it, will not warrant the court in charging the jury that “ if you find from the evidence that the defendant, J. A. McGoldrick, has admitted there was a partnershi