Action by Chalmer M. C. Prentice against the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company to recover damages for unlawful arrest of plaintiff, while a passenger, by the conductor of one of the companys trains. Verdict and judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error. Reversed.

Statement by Mr. Justice GRAY:

This was an action of trespass on the case, brought October 19, 1886, in the circuit court of the United States for the northern district of Illinois, by Prentice, a citizen of Ohio, [147 U.S. 101, 102] against the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, a corporation of Illinois, to recover damages for the wrongful acts of the defendants servants.

The declaration alleged, and the evidence introduced at the trial tended to prove, the following facts: The plaintiff was a physician. The defendant was engaged in operating a railroad, and conducting the business of a common carrier of passengers and freight, through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and other states. On October 12, 1886, the plaintiff, his wife, and a number of other persons were passengers, holding excursion tickets, on a regular passenger train of the defendants railroad, from Norwalk, in Ohio, to Chicago, in Illinois. During the journey the plaintiff purchased of several passengers their return tickets, which had nothing on them to show that they were not transferable. The conductor of the train, learning this, and knowing that the plaintiff had been guilty of no offense for which he was liable to arrest, telegraphed for a police officer, an employe of the defendant, who boarded the train as it approached Chicago. The conductor thereupon, in a loud and angry voice, pointed out the plaintiff to the officer, and ordered his arrest; and the officer, by direction of the conductor, and without any warrant or authority of law, seized the plaintiff, and rudely searched him for weapons, in the presence of the other passengers, hurried him into another car, and there sat down by him as a watch, and refused to tell him the cause of his arrest, or to let him speak to his wife. While the plaintiff was being removed into the other car, the conductor, for the purpose of disgracing and humiliating him with his fellow passengers, openly declared that he was under arrest, and sneeringly said to the plaintiffs wife, Wheres your doctor now? On arrival at Chicago, the conductor refused to let the plaintiff assist his wife with her parcels in leaving the train, or to give her the check for their trunk; and, in the presence of the passengers and others, ordered him to be taken to the station house, and he was forcibly taken there, and detained until the conductor arrived; and, knowing that the plaintiff had been guilty of no offense, entered a false charge against him of disorderly conduct, upon which he gave bail and was [147 U.S. 101, 103] released, and of which, on appearing before a justice of the peace for trial on the next day, and no one appearing to prosecute him, he was finally discharged.

The declaration alleged that all these acts were done by the defendants agents in the line of their employment, and that the defendant was legally responsible therefor; and that the plaintiff had been thereby put to expense, and greatly injured in mind, body, and reputation.

At the trial, and before the introduction of any evidence, the defendant, by its counsel, admitted that the arrest of the plaintiff was wrongful, and that he was entitled to recover actual damages therefor; but afterwards excepted to each of the following instructions given by the circuit judge to the jury:

If you believe the statements which have been made by the plaintiff and the witnesses who testified in his behalf, (and they are not denied,) then he is entitled to a verdict which will fully compensate him for the injuries which he sustained, and in compensating him you are authorized