Albert Steinfeld & Co. v. Wing Wong

128 P. 354, 14 Ariz. 336, 1912 Ariz. LEXIS 153
CourtArizona Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 20, 1912
DocketCivil No. 1269
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 128 P. 354 (Albert Steinfeld & Co. v. Wing Wong) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Arizona Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Albert Steinfeld & Co. v. Wing Wong, 128 P. 354, 14 Ariz. 336, 1912 Ariz. LEXIS 153 (Ark. 1912).

Opinion

ROSS, J.

This is an action on account. The appellee admits the account, but by way of avoidance alleges that the Wing Sen Company had therefore assumed the debt, and had fully paid it before suit was brought. The issue thus formed was tried to a jury, and resulted in a verdict in favor of [338]*338appellee. Judgment was entered accordingly, from which, and an order overruling a motion for a new trial, this appeal is prosecuted.

Appellant complains of injury in the admission of evidence and of instructions given and refused.

At the close of the taking of the testimony appellant moved for an instructed verdict, which raises the question as to whether the appellee had sufficiently established, by legal and proper evidence, his defense of payment as to entitle the submission of that issue to the jury. The evidence was that on February, 15, 1911, appellee sold his mercantile business to Wing Sen Company. Prior to that date, he carried a general current account with appellant, and on the date of sale was indebted to appellant in the sum of $1,511.28, which account the Wing Sen Company assumed as part of the purchase price of the Wing Wong mercantile business. The evidence is uncontradicted that the Wing Sen Company paid on the Wing Wong account $496.53 in February and March, leaving a balance of $1,014.75 of that account due and owing on April 1, 1911. The Wing Sen Company, soon after purchasing the Wing Wong business, opened a running account with appellant, the March purchases amounting to $289.25. The first statement of account rendered by appellant to the Wing Sen Company included the Wing Wong item of indebtedness of $1,014.75, together with the current purchases of the previous month made by the Wing Sen Company. The payments made by the Wing Sen Company were credited, as shown by the monthly statements rendered by appellant, as general credits. The identity of the $1,014.75 item disappeared with the first statement, and subsequent statements rendered by appellant showed varying balances, sometimes larger and sometimes smaller than the Wing Wong indebtedness. This course of dealing was kept up between appellant and the Wing Sen Company until in August, 1911. During the time the Wing Sen Company had bought of appellant goods valued at $1,382.26, and had paid on account the sum of $1,484.86, the payments made exceeding the purchases in the sum of $102.60. The payments made by the Wing Sen Company were unaccompanied by any instructions as to their application, and the only evidence, aside from the statements rendered by appellant, as to what account they were applied, was the testimony of Albert Miller, the agent of the appellant who [339]*339sold the goods to both Wing Wong and the Wing Sen Company. This witness testified that the payments were credited upon the monthly current accounts of the Wing Sen Company. He, however, was not the bookkeeper of appellant, and had nothing to do with the entering of the credits. George Land of the Wing Sen Company testified that his company had paid over $1,000 on the Wing Wong account. With this state of facts before the court we think the motion for an instructed verdict was properly overruled. The issue, as before stated, was as to whether the Wing Wong account had been paid or not, and there was proper and legal evidence tending to sustain the negative as well as the affirmative of that proposition. It was for the jury to say which side of the contention was right. The instructions of the court, we think, on the whole correctly stated the law.

The instruction particularly applicable to the issue, as made by the pleadings and evidence, was as follows: “You are instructed that the assumption of a person’s debt by a third party does not relieve the original debtor from liability to the creditor, even though the creditor is advised of the assumption by the second party. In other words, in this case the fact that the Wing Sen Company agreed to pay this account or debt to Steinfeld & Co., and that Steinfeld & Co. knew that Wing Sen Company had agreed to pay it, would not release Wing Wong from the debt, unless Steinfeld & Co. expressly agreed with Wing Wong to release him, so that in this case the assumption of the debt by Wing Sen Company would not be sufficient to exonerate Wing Wong, unless, in addition to the assumption of the debt, Wing Sen Company had paid the debt. So this case determines, and your verdict will turn upon whether or not the evidence in this case is' sufficient to satisfy you that Wing Sen Company, after assuming this $1,014.75 indebtedness, paid that amount to Steinfeld & Co. on the account of that old debt. If they have done so, and you are satisfied from the evidence that they have done so, you should, by your verdict, find for the defendant. If you are not convinced that they have done so, you should by your verdict find for the plaintiff in the amount that has not been proven to have been paid by Wing Sen Company.”

There is no complaint made of this instruction by appellant, but it contends that several instructions asked were improperly refused. The appellant’s requests that were refused were to [340]*340the effect in varying forms that, when one assumes and agrees; to pay the debt of another, both are liable to the creditor, in the absence of an agreement to relieve the original debtor, and-that the creditor may collect from either or both, and that an effort, made by rendering statements to and attempting to collect of the one who assumed to pay the debt authorizes no inference that the original debtor had been released. The-court told the jury in its instructions (supra) that nothing would relieve appellee from paying his debt, except payment by the Wing Sen Company, and, while it was a negative way of stating the law applicable to the issue, it was as comprehensive as the issue itself. No error, therefore, was committed in refusing the instructions asked by appellant, for the reason that they were fully covered by the court’s instruction. Sheehy v. Territory, 9 Ariz. 269, 80 Pac. 356; Greene v. Hereford, 12 Ariz. 85, 95 Pac. 105; Title Guaranty & Surety v. Nichols, 12 Ariz. 405, 100 Pac. 825; 38 Cyc. 1711.

The appellant complains that the court erred to its prejudice-by instructing the jury that payments must be credited as; directed at the time they were made or declined, and asserts, that there was no evidence of any directions as to how any payment should be credited, and that, therefore, the instruction was outside of the evidence and' the issue. It may be-true that this instruction is not supported by any evidence j “but an instruction stating a correct proposition of law is not necessarily misleading, or prejudicial, merely because it is. inapplicable to the facts in evidence, and where it is not so there is no ground for reversal.” 26 Cyc. 1622, note 46; Thornton-Thomas M. Co. v. Bretherton, 32 Mont. 80, 80 Pac. 10; Renfro v. Fresno Ry. Co., 2 Cal. App. 317, 84 Pac. 357. We cannot believe that this instruction misled the jury, or that the verdict was in any way influenced by it.

The court in another instruction called the attention of the-jury to the appellant’s different statements to the Wing Sen Company showing the credits as made by appellant on. such, statements, and suggested that the jury might want to consider the evidence as to where these several payments were credited by appellant when received by it from the Wing Sen Company.

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Bluebook (online)
128 P. 354, 14 Ariz. 336, 1912 Ariz. LEXIS 153, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/albert-steinfeld-co-v-wing-wong-ariz-1912.