[29ASR2d158]
PURSE SEINER SERVICES (
v.
TAGALOA LANG TAUFETEE dba LOA'S TRAVEL, Defendant
High Court of
Trial Division
CA No. 2-95
Before
KRUSE, Chief Justice, and SAGAPOLUTELE, Associate Judge.
Counsel: For
Plaintiff, William H. Reardon
For Defendant, Afoafouvale Lutu
Opinion
and Order:
Plaintiff owns and operates a travel agency with
direct access to airline ticket stock.
Defendant also owns and operates a travel agency but has only had access
to airline stock through plaintiff. At
all relevant times, defendant sold airline tickets for plaintiff at an agreed
commission of 5% on cash receipts and 3% on American Samoa Government travel
vouchers. The latter was only payable
upon plaintiff's receipt of payment from the government on its travel vouchers. At the outset of the parties
relationship, which began May 1994, plaintiff dealt with defendant on a cash
basis. A few months later, on or about
August 1994, defendant sought and was extended credit. It was the parties' management, or
mismanagement, of that credit facility that subsequently resulted in the
eventual dismissal of plaintiff's then sales manager, and the ensuing law suit
now before the court. According to
plaintiff's reckoning of accounts, defendant owed it $50,041.06.
After exchanging accounts reconciliation efforts, at
the urging of the court, defendant accepted, and accordingly stipulated in open
court, to the extent of $23,422.21, of the amount claimed by plaintiff. The issue then remaining for trial was
whether defendant owed the difference, namely, $26,618.85. Of this amount, plaintiff indicated its
willingness to concede, as de minimis,
defendant's claim of $870.50, said to be her commission share on unused ticket
refunds. On the basis of this
concession, the court is prepared to give defendant the benefit of the doubt
and apply the sum of $870.50 in her favor.[29ASR2d159]
As to the remaining $25,748.35 in contention,
defendant claims that she had already turned in a substantial amount of money
to Cecil Fairholt, plaintiff's sales manager at the
time, who did not always give her a receipt for the cash that she gave
him. Fairholt,
on the other hand, testified that while receipts were not always issued
contemporaneously when cash was picked up from defendant, receipts were
eventually issued for everything turned in by defendant.
We are satisfied that plaintiff's reconciliation of
accounts, based on the extent of its records, was correctly compiled. By comparison, we find defendant's submission
to be on dubious footing. She claims
that she has turned over all funds that she had received for ticket sales but
for approximately $15,000, which she seems to think is about what her account
should be. The principal basis of
defendant's claim is a log which she testified she had kept for the purpose of
recording cash payments, as she made them to either Fairholt
or others of plaintiff's staff. After
careful review of this log, however, we are unable to accept plaintiff's claim
that the log's holographic entries reflect a chronology of contemporaneous
recordings of cash disbursements made from time to time. Rather, the log appears more like a
reconstruction exercise undertaken at one time, ostensibly in preparation for
trial. In our assessment, this log is hardly
trustworthy evidence of defendant's claim.
We find that the evidence preponderates in favor of
plaintiff's version of the accounts as presenting the more accurate picture of
the accounts between the parties. We,
therefore, conclude that defendant is, in addition to the conceded indebtedness
of $23,422.21, further indebted to plaintiff in the sum of $25,748.35. The clerk will enter judgment accordingly in
favor of plaintiff, and against defendant, in the total sum of $49,170.56.
It is so ordered.