C. Aultman & Co. v. McFallon

11 F. 836
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedMay 15, 1882
StatusPublished

This text of 11 F. 836 (C. Aultman & Co. v. McFallon) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
C. Aultman & Co. v. McFallon, 11 F. 836 (E.D. Mich. 1882).

Opinion

Brown, D. J.,

(charging juay.) This is an action for the price of a steam-engine and threshing-machine sold by the plaintiff to the defendant. It becomes my duty to instruct you with regard to this contract, and the legal obligations arising from it.

Except in the matter of price I believe there is little or no conflict as to the terms of the contract. Mr. Swann says that the price was to be $1,250, less $40 freight, which the defendant paid, making the amount now-due $1,210. The defendant says that he was to give $1,225 for the machine, from which deducting the $40 would leave [837]*837§1,185 as the amount duo, with interest, in case your verdict should be for the plaintiff. Both of these parties — and if I am mistaken in my remembrance of any of this testimony I desire to be corrected— both of those parties agree that Mr. Swann represented the machino should be equal to any of its class; that it should do good work; and that tho defendant should take it upon trial, and should purchase it if it did as well as it was guarantied to do. One of them says, I believe, that the understanding was it should do as good work as any machine in the market; but, as there was no comparison of this with any other particular machine, I think that warranty would be satisfied if the machino or “the rig,” as it is called, did good work, or as good work as any machines which farmers are in the habit of buying. I do not understand there is any particular disagreement between Mr. Swann and the defendant as to the terms of the sale. It was agreed, Mr. Swann admits, that he should take it upon trial, and it was agreed between them that if it worked according to its guaranty the defendant would execute three promissory notes for its price. Those notes never have been executed.

Now, gentlemen, the first question for your consideration — leaving out this §25, which you must settle between yourselves, and the evidence seems to be equally balanced with regard to that — I say the first serious question connected with this caso is whether the machine worked as it was guarantied to work. If it did, then the defendant is hound to pay for it, irrespective of any other consideration. If the machine was such a machine as Mr. Swann represented it to be, then all the rest of this testimony is of no avail, and your verdict should he for the plaintiff for the price of the machine, less, perhaps, a deduction which I will speak of hereafter. And in this connection 1 charge you, as requested by defendant, that the defendant was not bound to accept the machine if either the engine or the separator failed to do what was promised by Swann, as the contract was an entirety; that is, the purchase was of tho two, — of the engine and of the separator together, — and if either of them did bad work tho defendant was at liberty to return both, but be could not return one and keep the other. Now, gentlemen, did this engine and separator do good work? The evidence upon that point has been very ably and fairly collated by the counsel who closed the case, and it is a question for yon to consider whether this machine was what it was represented to be.

And first, as to the separator, there is a conflict of testimony. The fault that was found with the separator seems to have been that [838]*838it wasted more grain than it ought to have done. That these threshing-machines will'all waste a little grain seems to be conceded; the question is whether this separator wasted more grain than a separator ought to. The evidence upon the part of the defendant tends to show that it wasted more grain than any other separator his witnesses had ever seen, and that it continued to do so after efforts were made to repair it. On the other hand, the evidence upon the part of the plaintiff tends to show that the separator wasted no more grain than all separators do, and that when it did waste it was because the separator was over-fed — fed too rapidly. It would naturally follow that if the separator was fed too rapidly it would waste grain; but the question for you is whether, if fed in the ordinary way in which separators were ordinarily fed, it wasted any more grain than good separators and the best separators ordinarily do. If you find that it did not — that after these little repairs were put upon it by Mr. Swann it did good work — then you are at liberty and should find, at least so far as the separator is concerned, that it complied with the warranty. Now, then, with regard to the engine. There does not seem to have been any particular fault found with the engine until the winter set in and it was turned over to work a portable saw-mill, and then it gave out, or at least it is claimed it did not do as good work as a ten-horse engine should have done. Now it is for you to say with regard to that. I am not at liberty to instruct you as to what my own opinion is with regard to it. The only question made about it while it was threshing wheat seems to have been that it required more steam than engines ordinarily did; but, so far as the working is concerned, there seems to have been no definite complaint made until it went into the portable saw-mill, when it is claimed it did not do as good work as a ten-horse engine should have done; that it was discarded, and another eight-horse engine was substituted, and after lying some six or eight weeks in the open air it went into the possession of Mr. Hurd, who used it. Now, then, gentlemen, it is for you to say as to what the condition of this engine was at the time it was received.

As bearing upon the question of the work done by the separator it is competent for you to consider that the defendant did make a very considerable out of it from the time he purchased it until late in November. The evidence tends to show that he made ten or twelve hundred dollars by th'e use of it. Now, while the fact that he made these profits is not in evidence for the purpose for which it was sought to be introduced, it does tendió show that the separator did [839]*839good work. If it had been a notoriously poor separator it is scarcely possible it would have found as much employment as it did that season.

Now, gentlemen, supposing this property did not fill the warranty, there is a further question for you to consider in connection with that. If it did not operate as it was guarantied to do, it was the duty of the defendant, within a reasonable time after the plaintiff had ceased his efforts to repair it, to give the plaintiff notice to take it away. It was not necessary that ho should carry it back to him, hut he should, within a reasonablo time after he had given it a fair trial, and after Mr. Swann had put it in such repair as he did, it was his duty, I say, to give Mr. Swann or the local agent in Jackson distinct notice that he would not receive it, and to take it away, or at least that ho would not receive it with the implied permission to take it away. Now, gentlemen, did he do this? In this connection I will read some requests, because a large part of the evidence in this case bears upon this question. I charge you, as requested by the defendant in his third request, that—

“Defendant had the right to test the machine before accepting it, and if he did test it and found it defective, and notified the plaintiff’s agent, Swann, that he did not want it, and that he did not return it because he was requested not to by Swann, and it would injure the business of plaintiff, then there was no such acceptance of the machine as would render the defendant liable.”

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Bluebook (online)
11 F. 836, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/c-aultman-co-v-mcfallon-mied-1882.