## Facts

- Ward (plaintiff) stored personal property with Morr Transfer & Storage Co. (defendant) at the company’s warehouse.
- Ward later claimed the company converted (wrongfully took or disposed of) the stored items and sued for their value.
- Before trial, Ward made a note each time she remembered an item that had been in storage.
- Ward later transcribed those notes into a single consolidated list.
- While testifying, Ward consulted the list on the witness stand when asked to identify the items involved (and to describe them for the jury).
- The jury returned a verdict for Ward.
- Morr Transfer & Storage Co. appealed, arguing that Ward’s use of the list while testifying was improper and should not have been allowed.

## Issues

1. May a witness consult a list she prepared from her own earlier notes—made over time as she recalled the contents of storage—to refresh her memory while testifying about the items allegedly converted?

## Decision

- The court held that Ward’s use of her list was permissible as a method of refreshing present recollection while testifying.
- The court rejected the defendant’s argument that consulting the list was improper merely because it was compiled from notes and used at trial.
- The judgment for Ward was affirmed.

## Legal Principles

- A witness who once had personal knowledge of facts may use a memorandum or list to refresh present recollection while testifying.
- A writing used to refresh recollection is permitted when it was made by the witness (or adopted by the witness) and is shown to aid the witness in giving testimony from memory.
- When a witness consults a writing only to refresh memory, the evidence is the witness’s testimony (from refreshed recollection), not the writing itself.

## Conclusion

Ward v. Morr Transfer & Storage Co. treated the appeal as turning on an evidentiary point: whether the plaintiff could consult a self-prepared list—compiled from notes she made as she remembered stored items—to assist her testimony in a conversion case. The court held the practice proper as refreshed-recollection testimony and affirmed the verdict for Ward.


Ward v. Morr Transfer & Storage Co., 95 S.W. 964 (1906)