Suddenly Mr. Newbegin contorted his mouth and exclaimed:
"Heck! A mouse!"
It was. The head waiter was summoned, the manager, the owner. Guests and
garcons crowded about Tutt and Mr. Newbegin to inspect what had so
unexpectedly been found. No one could deny that it was, mouse--cooked
mouse; and Newbegin had ordered kidney stew. Then Tutt had had his
inspiration.
"You shall pay well for this!" he cried, frowning at the distressed
proprietor, while Newbegin leaned piteously against a papier-mache
pillar. "This is an outrage! You shall be held liable in heavy damages
for my client's indigestion!"
And thus Tutt & Tutt got their first case out of Newbegin, for under the
influence of the eloquence of Mr. Tutt a jury was induced to give him a
verdict of one thousand dollars against the Comers Hotel, which the
Court of Appeals sustained in the following words, quoting verbatim from
the learned brief furnished by Tutt & Tutt, Ephraim Tutt of counsel:
"The only legal question in the case, or so it appears to us, is whether
there is such a sale of food to a guest on the part of the proprietor
as will sustain a warranty. If we are not in error, however, the law is
settled and has been since the reign of Henry the Sixth. In the Ninth
Year Book of that Monarch's reign there is a case in which it was held
that 'if I go to a tavern to eat, and the taverner gives and sells me
meat and it corrupted, whereby I am made very sick, action lies against
him without any express warranty, for there is a warranty in law'; and
in the time of Henry the Seventh the learned Justice Keilway said, 'No
man can justify selling corrupt victual, but an action on the case lies
against the seller, whether the victual was warranted to be good or
not.
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