Curtis v. Walpole Tire & Rubber Co.

227 F. 698, 1914 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1241
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedAugust 7, 1914
DocketNo. 472
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 227 F. 698 (Curtis v. Walpole Tire & Rubber Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Curtis v. Walpole Tire & Rubber Co., 227 F. 698, 1914 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1241 (D. Mass. 1914).

Opinion

DODGE, Circuit Judge.

These claims are dealt with in the fourth report, filed June 25, 1914, of the special master appointed by the order [699]*699entered in this case on January 9, 1914, to hear the parties and their evidence and report thereon to the court.

According to the report there was due from the Walpole Company on August 2, 1913, the date of the receivers’ appointment, on open accounts and notes — to Meyer & Co., $8,077.88; to .Brighton Mills, $510.-25; and to Charles T. Wilson, $28,015.57. No exceptions have been taken to these findings, and no objections being now raised by the receivers, or by any of the parties, the claims of these three creditors are allowed in the amounts above stated.

[1] According to the report there was also due for breach of conIract, from the Walpole Company, on the same date, to Meyer & Co., the further sum of $8,697.96, to Brighton Mills the further siim of $1,051.-35, to Charles T. Wilson the further sum of $7,229.62, and to R. J. Caldwell Company, Incorporated, the sum of $1,700. Upon these findings the receivers object to the allowance of the above, or of any, amounts, contending that damages for breach of the contracts referred to are not allowable in these proceedings as matter of law.

The facts regarding the contracts in question are the same in the case of each of the four claimants above named, and are found by the master as follows:

“Tt appeared from the evidence that in each of the foregoing claims there was, at the time the receivers were appointed, an existing contract between the claimant and the Walpole Tire & Rubber Company. The contract was, in substance, that the Walpole Tire & Rubber Company would purchase from the claimant certain specified merchandise in definite quantities and at stated times, and at a price fixed by the contract. In each instance the contract was an executory one, in part at least, when the receivers were appointed.
“The receivers, in the exercise of their discretion, notified the claimants that they should decline to assume the contract, and in each case the claimant treated the contract as broken and has claimed damages for the breach.”

In each of the above cases the creditor’s contract was of such a character that if, in the absence of any receivership, the company had dis-enabled itself from performance and repudiated its own obligations under the contract on the day the receivers were appointed, the creditor might at once have maintained a suit against it wherein damages for the breach could have been assessed and recovered.

If there had been bankruptcy, therefore, instead of this receivership, the trustee not electing to adopt the contract, each of the above creditors would have had the right to treat the bankruptcy as the equivalent of disenabiement and repudiation on the company’s part — in other words, as an anticipatory breach of the contract of the company — and, having so treated it, to prove for his damages sustained by reason of it. Such is the rule now well settled and regularly applied in this circuit. In re Swift, 112 Fed. 315, 50 C. C. A. 264, decided by the Court of Appeals in 1901; In re Pettingill & Co., 137 Fed. 144, in this court (1905); Pratt v. Auto, etc., Co., 196 Fed. 495, 116 C. C. A. 261, in the Court of Appeals (1912).

It will not be contended that this is a case of the appointment of receivers of an objecting corporation, or that the appointment did not in fact prevent performance of the contracts here in question. It therefore allccled the contracts (the receivers not adopting them) just as the [700]*700company’s bankruptcy would have affected them; in other words, it was the equivalent of repudiation or disenablement on the company’s part. Pennsylvania, etc., Co. v. New York, etc., Co., 198 Fed. 721, 743, 117 C. C. A. 503. The case is not one in which it can be said, as in Malcomson v. Wappoo Mills (C. C.) 88 Fed. 680, or In re Inman, etc., Co., 175 Fed. 312, that the prevention of performance was the act of the law, not of the insolvent or bankrupt.. Both these decisions were based upon People v. Globe Ins. Co., 91 N. Y. 174, in which the receiver’s appointment was at the instance of the state and for the purpose of dissolving the corporation and winding up its affairs.

The master, was therefore right, upon the facts found by him, in allowing the above claims for damages for breach of the contracts in question. It is understood that in each case the creditor had the specific merchandise contracted for and was ready to deliver it.

It is urged on behalf of the receivers that the damage claims allowed are such in character that they ought not, in equity, to be allowed to share in the assets until the general creditors are fully paid. Wells v. Hartford Manilla Co., 76 Conn. 27, 55 Atl. 599, is the authority mainly relied on. In that case, as here, the vendor had the undelivered merchandise ready to deliver at the time of the receiver’s appointment, but the receiver declined to take it. An alleged repudiation by the insolvent company just before its receivership was found by the court not to. have constituted a breach of the contract. Treating it as broken by the receiver’s refusal to adopt, the court was of opinion that the receiver had the privilege to elect whether to adopt it o,r not, “without at least subjecting the fund required for the satisfaction of existing claims of creditors to a charge for damages.” 76 Conn. 39, 55 Atl. 603. The claim was therefore treated as accruing subsequently to the receiver’s appointment, and as one which, being for “profits which the future, by reason of a good bargain, might have in store,” should be postponed to claims existing when the appointment was made. 76 Conn. 41, 55 Atl. 604.

But if I am right in holding that these creditors were entitled to treat the appointment of the receivers as in itself a breach of their contracts, for the reasons above given, it follows that their claims for damages came into, existence simultaneously with the appointment and are to be regarded as then existing. That the receivers might nevertheless have required performance and taken the goods is immaterial, after their failure to exercise the right. If the creditors had provided themselves with the goods in reliance upon their contracts, there is nothing in the facts found which shows that their loss by reason of the company’s failure to take and pay for them was merely the loss of a speculative profit. Damages to them occasioned by the loss of their contracts, so far as ascertainable by recognized methods of computation, are allowable claims in such proceedings as these, and in damages so ascertainable are included gains prevented, when-fairly shown. Penna., etc., Co. v. New York, etc., Co., 198 Fed. 721, 739, 740, 117 C. C. A. 503. The difference between the contract price and the market price, as fixed by a sale in consequence of the purchaser’s refusal to receive, is recognized as the proper measure of damages in cases such as this. Kingman v. [701]*701Western Mfg. Co., 92 Fed. 486, 490, 34 C. C. A. 489; River, etc., Co., v. Atlantic Mills (C. C.) 155 Fed. 466, 473. I am unable to find any sufficient ground for denying to a claim for such damages, so ascertained, equal rank, for the purposes of the distribution to be made, with other allowable claims not entitled to priority.

The total allowances made by the special master are therefore approved and confirmed, including the amounts allowed as due for breach of contract, viz.:

John IT.

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Bluebook (online)
227 F. 698, 1914 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1241, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/curtis-v-walpole-tire-rubber-co-mad-1914.