Doylestown Agricultural Co. v. Brackett, Shaw & Lunt Co.

84 A. 146, 109 Me. 301, 1912 Me. LEXIS 89
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedAugust 13, 1912
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 84 A. 146 (Doylestown Agricultural Co. v. Brackett, Shaw & Lunt Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Doylestown Agricultural Co. v. Brackett, Shaw & Lunt Co., 84 A. 146, 109 Me. 301, 1912 Me. LEXIS 89 (Me. 1912).

Opinion

Savage, J.

Assumpsit upon an account annexed to recover the price of certain agricultural implements and fittings sold and delivered to the defendant, amounting to $4,607.35. The plaintiff recovered a verdict for $3,958.44. The case is before this court upon the defendant’s motion for a new trial, and twenty-eight exceptions to the exclusion of evidence.

As the merits of nearly all the exceptions are necessarily involved in the determination of the rights of the parties under the motion, it will not be necessary to consider them in detail.

These facts appear. On March 12, 1909, the parties made a written contract, which, so far as material to the discussion of the case, contained the following provisions:—The plaintiff sold and the defendant bought fifty cultivators for $1125. The delivery was to be F. O. B. cars at Caribou, Miaine. Additional orders for like merchandise, shipped during the life of the contract, were -to be subject to its prices, terms and conditions. The agreement was to [303]*303terminate September i, 1911. The terms of settlement were “Net cash, October 1, 1909.” All cultivators remaining unsold by the defendant September 1, 1909, were to revert and become the property of the plaintiff, without recourse to the defendant. It was agreed “as a condition” that one J. P. Algire should go to Caribou with the defendant’s president, Brackett, and endeavor to the best of his ability to make sales of the number of cultivators specified. The defendant agreed to bear Algire’s actual traveling expenses from Philadelphia and return, and his hotel bills while making the sales. It would seem that this contract was originally made by Algire as special agent for the plaintiff, subject to approval, and it was afterwards approved by the plaintiff.

The fifty cultivators specified in the contract, and one hundred and eight others, under the terms of the contract, were delivered to the defendant, or on the defendant’s order, at different places in Maine in April or May, 1909, at agreed prices, amounting to $355:2.50. The defendant is charged with $310.56 for certain fittings and- other merchandise, of which it acknowledges a liability for $81.99. Its liability for the remainder depends upon its liability for the cultivators. The rest of the account relates to threshers and fittings, and for one of these, with articles accompanying it, amounting in all to $235, the defendant denies any liability whatever.

Of the one hundred and fifty-eight cultivators received by the defendant, it disposed of one hundred and four to various local dealers in agricultural machinery on their written orders by which they respectively became bound to pay for the cultivators ordered, with a stipulation in each order “that the title to said machinery shall remain in and with Brackett, Shaw & Lunt Co.” until paid for. And in one such order for fifty cultivators, dated March 31, 1909, it was also stipulated that “all cultivators not sold this season will remain the property of Brackett, Shaw & Punt Co.” The price, to the defendant, of these cultivators was $2373.50. The orders or contracts which the defendant took from dealers for the other fifty-four cultivators were not put into the case. But the plaintiff’s president on cross-examination was shown these contracts, and inquired of, without objection, as to their contents. The contracts themselves, of course, were the best evidence. But the witness’s [304]*304testimony is the best we have before us, and having been given without abjection,, it must be considered. That testimony shows that twenty-seven- cultivators were sold outright to dealers for $607.50, and twenty-seven were consigned to dealers at the same price. And while some of these orders from dealers were taken in the plaintiff’s name, they were taken on the defendant’s account, and were so recognized.

The defense, as to the cultivators, as outlined in the defendant’s brief statement, is two-fold. First, that as an indiicement to the defendant to contract for the cultivators, the plaintiff or its agents, falsely represented that the cultivator in question, known as the New Age cultivator, was identical with the Iron Age cultivator which was then being sold and which was well and favorably known among the farmers of Aroostook 'County, in which locality the larger part of the cultivators were intended to be put on sale; and that the parts of the New Age were interchangeable with those of the Iron Age. As to this defense, it is necessary to say only this. While it is true, that under the circumstances of this case, such representations about the physical characteristics of the cultivators to be purchased, made to one who had no opportunity to know the true facts, would be material,, and, other necessary elements being proved, if the representations were false, the defendant would be entitled either to rescind, or to recoup in damages, but unfortunately for that defense, there is no evidence in the’ case to support it. The defendant did not rescind and restore, for any cause; nor is there any basis shown for recoupment on account of material false representations.

Secondly, that in accordance with the original contract Algire went to Aroostook County, with Brackett, and helped him secure orders from dealers for substantially all of the one hundred and fifty-eight cultivators; and that in selling these cultivators Algire made false representations, on the strength of which the sales were made. Many of the representations claimed to have been false were manifestly immaterial, for they were merely the expression of Algire’s opinion. But it is claimed, and proven too, that Algire did represent the cultivator as being like the Iron Age, with which the purchasers were familiar, so like it, indeed, that the parts of the two cultivators were interchangeable. That we think was material. [305]*305And it is shown that the representations were false. It is not shown that Mr. Brackett knew them to be false.

The dealers undertook to sell the cultivators to their customers. They did sell some. But in the end the customers, all but two, returned them to the dealers. The complaint in general was that the cultivator was not adapted to the' Aroostook soil, which was probably true, but which so far as we can see, is not material to any legitimate issue in this case: But the specific complaint in many cases concerned a wooden pin brake in the New Age, which was one of the many features in which the New Age was not like the Iron Age. Although some of the dealers notified the defendant of the troubles, none of them appear effectually to have rescinded their contracts. They stored, but did not restore, the goods, without which, or a waiver of it, rescission is ineffectual.

Under this condition of things, and assuming that the individual purchasers were justified in returning the cultivators to the dealers, (though it does not anywhere appear upon what terms or representations any individual purchaser had made his purchase, or whether he had a right to rescind) we come now to consider the defendant’s contentions respecting the consequences of Algire’s false representations. It contends that in selling or consigning cultivators to dealers, Algire was the plaintiff’s agent, for whom the plaintiff was responsible. From this premise it is argued that if Algire made false representations, they were the plaintiff’s false representations, and that if in consequence of these representations the dealers had the right to rescind and did rescind, the plaintiff cannot justly claim, nor lawfully maintain a claim, that the culti’ntois. mw sold pilot to Soptomte 1,1909, mtom toe.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
84 A. 146, 109 Me. 301, 1912 Me. LEXIS 89, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/doylestown-agricultural-co-v-brackett-shaw-lunt-co-me-1912.