Day v. Weinstein

IIraer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The single exception in this case raises the question whether there is in the record any evidence having a legally sufficient tendency to prove that the plaintiff was falsely imprisoned at the instance of the defendants, as alleged in the declaration. At the close of the trial below an instruction was granted, at the defendants’ request, withdrawing the case from the jury. Mr. Day, the plaintiff, conducts a general merchandise store, and for the purpose of stimulating trade he announced that a certain article would be given as a premium to the person whose purchases at the store, represented by sale tickets, reached the highest total during a designated period.

Having been informed that the children of the defendants, ’Mr. and Mrs. Weinstein, were soliciting and obtaining sale tickets which had been issued to other customers, the plain ¹⁰⁶ tiff questioned the right of the defendants to he included in the competition for the premium. This attitude on the part of the plaintiff provoked the defendants to return a pair of shoes which they had recently purchased from him, but which Mrs. Day, who1 was assisting her husband in the store, refused to receive because, as she claimed, they had been worn. During the controversy which ensued Mrs. Day is said to have thrown the shoes at Mrs. Weinstein, striking and injuring her arm. Two< days later, as the plaintiff and his witnesses testified, he and his wife were both arrested and taken to a police station.

The arrest of Mrs. Day is admitted, but the assertion that the plaintiff was also taken into custody is denied by the officers to whom such an act is attributed. They testified that the plaintiff accompanied his wife to the police station on his own volition. The defendants were not present at the time and place of Mrs. Day’s arrest, and of the alleged simultaneous arrest of her husband, but were at tbe police station when the plaintiff and his wife arrived. No warrant had been issued for tbe arrest of the plaintiff, and he had committed no act for which he could be lawfully arrested without a warrant.

According to the testimony for the plaintiff, when he and his wife reached the police station, the desk sergeant inquired as to the charges against them, and was informed by Weinstein that Day had called him a “damn liar.” Mrs. Weinstein is said to have supported her husband in making the accusation. Mrs. Day was charged with an assault and battery on Mrs. Weinstein by striking her with the shoes. The alleged charge against Day was immediately dismissed, as he testified, while Mrs. Day was required to give bail pending a trial the next day before a police justice, by whom she was acquitted. If the plaintiff was in fact arrested, under the circumstances described in his testimony, he was thereby subjected to an unlawful restraint of bis liberty, and if the defendants procured or induced the arrest, they are amenable to this suit for false imprisonment.

Mahan v. Adam, 144 Md. 355; ¹⁰⁷ Fleisher v. Ensminger, 140 Md. 604 ; Balto. & O. R. R. Co. v. Cain, 81 Md. 87 ; Lewin v. Uzuber, 65 Md. 341 ; Stansbury v. Fogle, 37 Md. 369 . There is no proof that the arrest of the plaintiff was requested by the defendants. On the contrary, it was testified by the officers, who are said to have made the arrest, that the only charge upon which they acted was the one preferred by Weinstein against Mrs. Day for the alleged assault on his wife. If there is any ground whatever in the evidence for holding the defendants