Eagle v. Smith

9 Del. 293

• Court: Superior Court of Delaware
• Decided: July 5, 1871
• Status: Published

Opinion

The. Court,

Houston J.,

charged the jury. According to the ruling and the view taken of the matter by the Judges in the case cited from 24 E. C. L. R., such an offer is not to be regarded so much as a matter of definite or special agreement or contract concluded between two parties, but as a general promise made to no one in particular, but to any one, on a precedent condition to be performed by the party claiming the reward, and that simply was to return the lost property, or give information that would enable the defendant to recover it. And taking this view of it, we concur in the opinion entertained by the court in that case, (for it clearly appeared in that case that the party claiming the reward was not induced by it to give the information for which it was offered) that it was not necessary that the plaintiff in this case should have been prompted or induced by the reward at all, to do what he did to entitle him to recover it, if he performed either of the alternative conditions prescribed in it. And if it was not necessary that he should have been induced in consideration of it to do what he did, on a parity of reasoning we cannot perceive that there was any more necessity that he should have even known that it had been offered before he did it. It has never been required in such cases for the claimant to show that he performed the service in consideration of the reward offered, and we are not required to presume in any such case, that the claimant had previously seen the reward advertised and had assented to the terms proposed, in it, before performing the services invited and requested of any and every one able to render it, in order to constitute a specific contract hv implication between the particular parties to the suit for that purpose. On the contrary, until the prescribed condition of the reward is performed, it is but the general promise of one party alone, and the sum. offered is but a boon, gratuity or bounty generally offered in a spirit of liberality, and not as a mere price, or a just equivalent simply for the favor or service requested, to be agreed and assented to by the person afterward performing it, but when performed by him, as justly^^^^aByeñtp1 tling him to a fulfillment of the promise, withmm^^vregard whatever to the motive or inducement which prompted him to perform it.

The fact proved that the plaintiff when asked by the defendant on the return of the property, what he asked for his trouble and attention on the occasion, replied that he asked nothing, we think is sufficiently met and accounted for by the simultaneous fact also proved that the defendant said nothing to him about what he had concluded before that in his own mind to offer for the recovery of it, and did not inform him that he had already, issued an advertisement of a reward of fifty dollars for the return of it, for publication. Had the plaintiff been informed of that fact, it was but reasonable to presume from what has since occurred, that his reply on that occasion would have been quite different. We, therefore, consider under all the facts proved, and about which there is no dispute, that the plaintiff is entitled to recover, and the verdict of the jury should be in his favor.