Given v. Charron

Le Grand, C. J., delivered the opinion, of this court. This action was instituted to recover for an alleged wrongful dismissal of the plaintiff from the employment of the defendant. The declaration contains a special count, the indebitatus counts and an account stated. The special count sets out a special agreement between the plaintiff and the defendant, for the hire of the plaintiff for the period of six months, from January 1st, 1855, to July 1st, 1855, at the sum of eight hundred dollars, and that the plaintiff was discharged wrongfully, by tbe defendant, on the first day of April 1855.

There was no witness examined in the case, who proved either the special agreement of employment counted upon, or the value of the plaintiff’s services. After proving the length of time which the plaintiff was in the employ of the defendant, and that he was a salesman of the first order; it was then proposed to offer, on behalf of the plaintiff, evidence of a custom among dry goods jobbers, such as was the defendant, in the city of Baltimore, that when a clerk or salesman begins a season in the absence of, or without a special contract, the clerk or salesman cannot be dismissed until the termination of the season, and that the seasons are two, the one from January the 1st to the 1st of July, and the other from July 1st to January 1st. The ⁵⁰⁸ admissibility of this evidence was objected to, but the court overruled, the objection and admitted the evidence to go to the jury. The defendant excepted.

We think the testimony was properly admitted. It was pertinent to the contract declared upon, and a link in the chain of evidence to establish a custom existing among dry goods jobbers as to the time for which they were to be understood as employing clergy when nothing was said in regard t.o it. The question of the reasonableness of the custom was not involved in the offer, nor was its effect upon the lights of the plaintiff to recover determined by its admission. Those were questions reserved for the further, decision of tire court on the whole evidence, in the cause..

The evidence contained in the first bill of exceptions is in the second also. It. was proven that certain-persons, constituted a firm, under the name of Bartholow, Tiffany & Co., of which firm the plaintiff was one. The firm was dissolved; subsequently to the dissolution, the plaintiff became the clerk of the defendant. The dissolution took place on the bl tin of Spptember 1854.

The only proof given of value of services was the rate at which they were paid for by Hamilton & Co., into whose employ the plaintiff entered