$10,000 a year salary, payable monthly, no time being specified, was a hiring at will and could be terminated by the defendant at any time; that the fact that the compensation was measured at so much a year did not make the hiring for a year, and the plaintiff being discharged before the end of the year could only recover for the time actually served. The Court said : — "The learned counsel for the plaintiff argues that a gen eral hiring means, as matter of law, an employment from year to year, and insists that his proposition is sustained by the decision of this Court in Adams v. Fitzpatrick, 125 N. Y. 124. "The case cited does not decide the point in question, although certain expressions in the opinion and reference to English cases might seem, upon a casual reading, to jus tify a contrary contention. "The referee found however that the parties originally contemplated a hiring for a year, and this Court held that on the continuation of the employment after the expiration of the year, without further agreement, it would be pre sumed that the parties had assented to renew the contract for a like period. "The present condition of the law as to the legal effect of a general hiring is thus stated by Mr. Wood in his work on Master and Servant (2d edition), section 136, as fol
lows : ' In England it is held that a general hiring, or a hiring by the terms of which no time is fixed, is a hiring by the year. . . . With us, the rule is inflexible, that a general or indefinite hiring is prima facie a hiring at will; and if the servant seeks to make it out a yearly hiring, the burden is upon him to establish it by proof. A hiring at so much a day, week, month, or year, no time being specified, is an indefinite hiring, and no presumption attaches that it was for a day even, but only at the rate fixed for whatever time the party may serve. ... A contract to pay one $2,500 a year for services is not a contract for a year, but a contract to pay at the rate of $2,500 a year for services actually ren dered, and is determinable at will by either party. Thus it will be seen that the fact that the compensation is measured at so much a day, month, or year does not necessarily make such hiring a hiring for a day, month, or year, but that in all such cases the contract may be put an end to by either party at any time, unless the time is fixed, and a recovery had, at the rate, fixed for the services actually ren dered.' The decisions on this point in the lower Courts have not been uniform, but we think the rule is correctly stated by Mr. Wood, and it has been adopted in a number of States (Evans v. St. L., I. M. & S. R'y Co., 24 Mo. App. 114; Finger v. Brewing Co., 13 Mo. App. 310; De Briar v. Minturn, I Cal. 450; Haney v. Caldwell, 35 Ark. 156, 168; Prentiss v. Ledyard, 28 Wis. 130."
JW=»
