Reid v. Warren Improvement Co.

HALL, J.

This is an appeal by plaintiff from a judgment in his favor, but for a less amount than he claimed, taken within sixty days from the rendition and entry of the judgment.

The complaint is in three counts, and sets up three distinct causes of action. In the first count appellant sued to recover the reasonable value of services rendered by appellant to respondent, as an attorney at law. The services are alleged to be reasonably worth the sum of $665.

In its answer respondent denied that said services were reasonably worth any greater sum than $152.29. Respondent further alleged that said services were rendered under an express contract, whereby appellant was to pay ten per cent of such sums as he might collect for respondent, and alleged the facts showing that under this contract appellant was entitled to but $152.29 for his said services.

It is most convenient for us first to dispose of the points relating to the first count.

The court found the reasonable value of the services sued for in this count to be the sum of $343.22, and the principal point urged for a reversal of the judgment as to this count is that said finding is not supported by the evidence. Preliminary, however, to discussing this point we will dispose of the only other point raised by appellant, to wit, that the court erred in admitting in evidence two bills rendered by appellant to respondent for the services sued for in this count.

The objection urged is that the bills or accounts were rendered by way of an offer for a compromise. We do not think

[748]

that the record supports this contention. It does not appear that up to the time of the rendition of the hills any controversy had arisen as to the amount thereof, but they appear from the record before us to have been rendered in the ordinary course of business. Furthermore, in appellant’s complaint it is alleged “that the particulars of the said services are more specifically set forth in an account of the same rendered to the defendant on the nineteenth day of July, 1907, at the instance of the defendant.” The second bill is the account rendered on said day, and begins with a balance in favor of appellant carried forward from the first bill. The two bills thus constituted the account referred to in the complaint, and set forth the particulars of the services sued for in this count. We think it hardly lies in the mouth of the plaintiff to object to the introduction of an account thus referred to in his own complaint. These bills contained itemized charges for all the services sued for in the first count of the complaint. As to all but one of the items the charge made in the bills was very much less than the amount testified to by appellant as the reasonable value of his services. The bills or accounts were competent and material evidence against defendant, both as to the particulars of the services sued for and as to the value thereof. The court, therefore, did not err in admitting them over the objections of appellant.