McDowell v. Friedman Bros. Shoe Co.

115 S.W. 1028, 135 Mo. App. 276, 1909 Mo. App. LEXIS 602
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJanuary 12, 1909
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 115 S.W. 1028 (McDowell v. Friedman Bros. Shoe Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McDowell v. Friedman Bros. Shoe Co., 115 S.W. 1028, 135 Mo. App. 276, 1909 Mo. App. LEXIS 602 (Mo. Ct. App. 1909).

Opinion

GOODE, J.

(after stating the facts). — Appellant, Friedman Bros. Shoe Co., was garnished under an execution issued in the case of respondent against H. B. Sandeford. The service of garnishment was August 10, 1906. Sandeford Avas employed by appellant company, and had been for about fourteen years, as a traveling salesman in the State of Arkansas. At the trial of the garnishment proceeding, judgment was given against appellant for $834.01, pursuant to . the verdict of a jury, and this appeal was taken. Our statutes provide that no person shall be charged as garnishee for more than ten per cent of any wages due to a defendant in his employ, for the last thirty days of service, if the employee is the head of a family and a resident of this State. [2 Mo. Ann. Stat., sec. 3435.] The controversy in the case is regarding whether San-defprd was a resident of the State at the time of the service. The jury found against the garnishee for Sandeford’s total wages and, therefore, must have found he was a non-resident. These are the facts: he was a married man Avith one child, a daughter, and during the years of his employment by appellant, had resided in St. Louis, to Avhich point he returned for brief stays five or six times a year. In December, 1905, while his home was on McMillan avenue in said city, [281]*281both bis wife and bis daughter fell ill with pneumonia and were taken to the Deaconess Hospital, where they lay for two months. In February, 1906, they were well enough to be moved, and Sandeford gave up his house in St. Louis, which he had occupied as tenant, and during that month or March, took his family to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where they boarded for three months, and then he took a lease for them until January, 1907, on a small house and furnished it with a portion of the furniture they had used in St. Louis, the remainder being left in storage in said city. The move, to the south was made pursuant to the advice of the physician who had attended the daughter; advice given because her lungs remained affected after she had recovered from pneumonia. Mrs. Sandeford and daughter lived in the Pine Bluff cottage about three months and then, early in the summer of 1906, went to visit the former’s mother in Mississippi where they stayed during the summer, but the house in Pine Bluff was kept meanwhile and they returned to it in the fall of 1906, and occupied it until late in January, when it was given up and the furniture in it sold. Thereafter the family lived in a hotel or boarding house in Pine Bluff until March 25th, when they came to St. Louis, where they remained until May and then went again to Mississippi. While they were in Pine Bluff, Sandeford would stop with them when he came into that town on his business trips. The second visit to Mississippi continued until October, 1907, when they went to Shawnee, Oklahoma, to consult a physician who had treated the daughter in her childhood, and in whose skill the family reposed special confidence. Sandeford testified he always registered from St. Louis and voted and paid taxes there when he performed those duties, but had done neither for several years; that at no time had he paid taxes or voted in Arkansas; that he took his family to Pine Bluff in the spring of 1906 in the hope of benefiting their health, particularly the daughter’s, and his con[282]*282stant intention was to return to St. Louis and make it his home again when the daughter’s health Avas sufficiently restored.

The instructions to the jury granted at respondent’s request, are called into question on the appeal and particularly the first. It is said that instruction did not require the jury to find Sandeford, who it is admitted had been a resident of St. Louis, left this State with the intention of changing his residence. Further, that it suggested this thought; if he had abandoned a home in St. Louis, of the character described, and had established one of the like character in Pine Bluff, he was no longer a resident of this State, even though he preserved a fixed intention to remain away only temporarily, and to resume living here as soon as was consistent with the purpose of his removal. The instruction was drawn so as to define the sense in which the term “residence” was used in all the instructions. Though it purported to describe what would constitute a , legal residence in St. Louis, it impliedly described what would constitute one in Pine Bluff; and if the definition was misleading, it must have been prejudicial to Sandeford and appellant. The first paragraph of the instruction was copied from the opinion of the Supreme Court in State v. Snyder, 182 Mo. 462, 514, where it is approvingly quoted from an opinion of the Supreme Court of Michigan, and counsel for respondent say it is an accurate definition of a person’s residence, according to the decision of our Supreme Court. But many observations may occur in the judicial discussion. of a question, which are not intended to be given in charge to a jury, and cannot be with propriety unless, under the facts of the particular case, they will assist the jury in reaching a right verdict. What is meant by the terms “residence” and “domicile” and when they are synonymous and when not, have been considered by courts with reference to different purposes; such as a person’s testamentary capacity, [283]*283duty to pay taxes, right to vote, administer on an estate, succeed to personal property, hold an office, claim exemption from military service, maintain the defense of the Statute of Limitations, resist an attachment against his property, claim the benefit of the exemption of homestead laws and challenge the jurisdiction of a court. [See note to Guier v. O’Daniel, 1 Am. Lead. Cas. (5 Ed.), 877, 887.] It is not to be supposed what is said in passing on a case belonging to one of those classes, will always be appropriate in a case of another class, or that the rules prescribed in the different cases will exactly coincide, [Id., loc. cit. 888.] In Snyder’s case the Supreme Court was concerned with the question of whether "the words “inhabitant of” the State and the words “usually resident” therein, were of identical meaning in the statute permitting an indictment to be found against a person for a felony more than three years after the commission of the crime, if, meanwhile, he should not have been an inhabitant of, or usually resident in, the State. [2 Mo. Ann. Stat., sec. 2421.] Several decisions by the Supreme Court of Michigan, in which a similar point had been considered, were cited, and the language of the first paragraph of the instruction was quoted from one, as it had been quoted by the Michigan court from the opinion in Chaine v. Wilson, 1 Bosw. 673. Our Supreme Court did not mean to state a definition of the word “residence” which could he given to a jury in every litigation wherein the meaning of said term might be involved. This is so because the passage omits the element of intended permanency in the description of residence; an element required by our statute . (section 4160) which says residence is where a person’s family shall permanently reside, and, for most purposes, by universal law; permanency, not in the sense that the residence must never he changed, but in the-sense that there is no intention to change it. [Story, Confl. Laws (8 Ed.), p. 43.] In the present case we find admitted one [284]*284of the principal facts which, according to all the authorities, enters into the question of whether a change of residence has occurredthe physical fact of the removal of Sandeford and his family from the place in St. Louis which it is agreed had been their residence. [Ringgold v. Barley, 5 Md. 186; Harral v. Harral, 39 N. J. Eq. 279, 285; 10 Ency.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
115 S.W. 1028, 135 Mo. App. 276, 1909 Mo. App. LEXIS 602, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcdowell-v-friedman-bros-shoe-co-moctapp-1909.