Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

51 Mo. App. 270

Jesserich v. Walruff

Missouri Court of Appeals

Decided November 14, 1892

Missouri Court of Appeals · decided 1892-11-14

Error from the Jaclcson Circuit Court. — Hon J. H. Slover, Judge.' (1) The promise to pay for the reasonable value of plaintiff’s services which the law would infer, assuming his account of the telephone message to be true, was not within the statute of frauds. (2) The court erred in refusing to give the declarations of law asked by plaintiff.

Relies on Meisenbach v. Southern Cooperage Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1892-11-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently December 1922

7 state decisions

301892190019101920decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Smith, P. J.

¶1This was an action brought by the plaintiff, a practicing physician and surgeon, against the defendant, a brewer, to recover the sum of $300 for medical and surgical services performed for one Joseph Maeder, at the special instance and request of defendant. The answer was a general denial, accompanied with the plea of the statute of frauds. The cause was tried before the court which resulted in a judgment for defendant, to reverse which plaintiff has brought the case here by writ of error.

¶2*272The plaintiff complains of the action of the trial court in refusing a number of instructions asked by him. The theory of these instructions is that, if the plaintiff was requested by the defendant to treat Maeder, and that the former complied with such request then the latter is liable, unless the former was given to fairly understand that he was called at the request of Maeder. Maeder was a mere employe of defendant in his brewery. The rule is now well established that, when a person requests a physician to perform service for a patient, the law does not raise an implied promise-to pay the reasonable value of the services so rendered, unless the relation of the person making the request to the patient is such as raises a legal obligation on his part to call in a physician and pay for his services. Meisenbach v. Cooperage Co., 45 Mo. App. 234, and the authorities there cited. Tested by this rule it is too plain for argument that the theory embraced in the plaintiff’s instructions was erroneous.

¶3As between the defendant and Maeder, the law raised no implied promise to pay the plaintiff for the professional services rendered for Maeder by plaintiff at the request of defendant, and for that reason the defendant was not obliged to inform the plaintiff that he was called at the request of Maeder, or that he would not be responsible for the value of the professional services so rendered by plaintiff, in order to exempt himself from liability.

¶4We think the court committed no error in refusing to adopt the theory of the plaintiff’s refused instructions, and, therefore, it results that the judgment must be affirmed.

All concur.
/51/moapp/270 · .json · Public domain