Corkran, Hill & Co. v. Fruman

Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This suit was brought by the appellee against the appellant corporation, in the Court of Common Pleas of Baltimore City, to recover for personal injuries sustained in a collision between the appellee’s automobile and that of the appellant, which is alleged to have occurred because of the negligent operation of -the appellant’s car. The declaration claimed damages to the amount of $5,000. Subsequently' the appellant brought suit against the appellee in the Peoples’ Court of Baltimore City to recover’ for the damage to the appellant’s automobile in the same accident.

It was the theory of the second suit that the collision was caused by the appellee’s negligence. The amount of damages claimed by the appellant was $94. There was an early trial of that case, resulting in a judgment for the appellant for the sum of $44.10 and costs, from which the appellee took an appeal to the Baltimore City Court, where a similar judgment, on the verdict of a jury, was rendered. After that final disposition of its suit the appellant filed pleas of res adjudicaba to the appellee’s prior and pending action.

The principal question, on this appeal from a judgment for the appellee, is whether the judgment on the appeal from the Peoples’ Court to the Baltimore City Court, in the appellant’s suit against ²⁵⁹ the appellee, is conclusive of the issue involved in the present litigation. At the trial of this suit in the Snperior Court of Baltimore City, to which it had been removed from the Court of Common Pleas, parol evidence was admitted to1 the effect that, in the trial of the other suit in the Baltimore City Court, the appellee, as defendant in that case, was not allowed to offer evidence because of the pendency of his suit in the Court of Common Pleas There was no contradiction of that testimony. The record of the docket entries and pleadings in the appellant’s suit shows that it related to the same accident as the one to which the pending action refers, but according to the undisputed proof the defense there attempted to be interposed was excluded because it was the basis of the recovery sought in this separate suit, which had been previously instituted and was then awaiting trial. It is conceded that the evidence offered in this ease, while contradicted, was legally sufficient to prove that the appellant’s negligence was responsible for the accident in which the appellee was injured, and to support the verdict for the ap*pellee, which was for the sum of $152.

One of the essential conditions for the application of the principle of res adjudicata is that the issue, in the trial of which it is invoked, must have been determined on the merits by the former