Horne & Ponder v. O. B. & E. J. Evans

120 S.E. 787, 31 Ga. App. 370, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 950
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedDecember 7, 1923
Docket14890
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 120 S.E. 787 (Horne & Ponder v. O. B. & E. J. Evans) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Horne & Ponder v. O. B. & E. J. Evans, 120 S.E. 787, 31 Ga. App. 370, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 950 (Ga. Ct. App. 1923).

Opinion

Bell, J.

1. The cardinal rule for the construction of contracts is to ascertain the intention of the parties. If that intention be clear and contravenes no rule of law, and sufficient words be used to arrive at the intention, it should be enforced, irrespective of all technical or arbitrary rules of construction. Civil Code (1910), § 4266. Parol evidence is inadmissible to add to, take from, or vary a written contract. All the attendant and surrounding circumstances may be proved, and if there is an ambiguity, latent or patent, it may be explained; so if a part of a contract only is reduced to writing (such as a note given in pursuance of a contract), and it is manifest that the writing was not intended to speak the whole contract, then parol evidence is admissible. Civil Code (1910), § 4268 (1). All contemporaneous writings are admissible to explain each other; and parol evidence is admissible to explain all ambiguities, both latent and patent. Civil Code (1910), § 5789. The construction which will uphold a contract in whole and in every part is to be preferred, and the whole contract should be looked to in arriving at the construction of any part. Civil Code (1910), § 4268 (3).

2. It is not essential that a contract be contained in a single paper. Where an action was brought upon a promissory note reciting that it was given for the purchase price of a tractor, and containing the following clause: “No verbal statements have been made not included in this contract, and the property sold is sold without any warranty, express or implied, by vendor or his agent, not herein stated,” the note would appear, upon its face, to integrate all the terms and conditions of the sale, but it could be shown, by a writing simultaneously executed, to be only a part of the contract, and it was permissible for the defendant vendee to. plead, in defense to the action, that simultaneously with the execution of the note the plaintiff vendor executed and delivered to him a writing containing an express warranty of the quality and serviceability of the property sold, that the two writings together formed the contract, and that the warranty contained in the separate [371]*371writing had been breached. Martin v. Monroe, 107 Ga. 330 (3), 333 (33 S. E. 62); Arnold v. Empire Mutual &c. Ins. Co., 3 Ga. App. 685, 702 (60 S. E. 470); Cable Co. v. McFeeley, 7 Ga. App. 435 (66 S. E. 1103); Guinn v. Marshall, 156 Ga. 480 (119 S. E. 397).

(а) The warranty so given by the vendor would not be invalid as a nudum pactum. Read v. Gould, 139 Ga. 499 (2) (77 S. E. 642).

(б) The clause in the note, that the property was sold without any warranty “not herein stated,” may be shown, by proof of the simultaneous execution of the warranty in a separate writing and of all the attending and surrounding circumstances, to refer, by the phrase just quoted, not merely to the note, but to the entire contract, consisting of both writings. Cable Co. v. McFeeley, supra.

(e) Applying the principles enunciated above, the court did not err in allowing, over objection of the plaintiff, an amendment to the answer, setting up the express warranty alleged to have been contained in the separate writing executed simultaneously with the note sued on; and when this amendment was allowed it was proper for the court to overrule the plaintiffs’ demurrer to paragraph 4 of the answer, referring to the breach of an express warranty, although it did not at first show that the warranty was in writing.

3. The express warranty pleaded was: (a) that the tractor was “new, [6] substantially constructed in workmanlike manner, and [e] that it would render all services required of a tractor of its design in every particular.” The testimony in behalf of the defendants tended to show the execution of the warranty as alleged, and also that it had been lost. While the plaintiffs denied the execution of such writing, the conflict in the evidence upon this point was one to be solved by the jury. One of the defendants testified as follows* in regard to the contents of this writing: “I don’t remember all that was in it, but I know it said it [the tractor] was guaranteed to be all right and to do as good work as any other tractor.” Upon the same point the other defendant testified: “It was a printed guarantee and said they guaranteed it to do good work and other things I don’t remember.” The wife of one of the defendants, who swore she had kept the instrument until it was lost, testified also regarding its contents: “I don’t remember all there was in it, but I am sure it said the machine would do first-class work.” Eeld: While it is true that where a party bases a right upon an instrument which has been lost or destroyed, he must show, among other things, what were the substantial terms and provisions of the instrument (Fay v. Burton, 147 Ga. 648 (4), 95 S. E. 224; New Ware Furniture Co. v. Reynolds, 16 Ga. App. 19 (3), 84 S. E. 491; Greer v. Young, 113 Ga. 120, 38 S. E. 314), the above-quoted evidence was sufficient to meet this requirement, and was not a fatal variance from the alleged warranties designated above as b and c.

4. The defendants pleaded that they purchased the tractor “to be used for the purpose of threshing grain, plowing, and general traction work,” “which fact and use the plaintiffs knew at the time of the sale;.” and thereupon sought a recovery for a loss of toll during the years 1920 and 1921, which they might have earned by the operation of a public threshing machine propelled by the power of the tractor, if the tractor had conformed to the warranties, and also for the loss of the time of [372]*372'several laborers employed to assist the defendants in carrying on the enterprise named, who were idle certain days in each of the years 1920 and 1921 when the tractor would not work. Held: The plea was not sufficient to show that in the sale of the tractor the parties contracted with reference to the intention of the defendants to use the tractor'in this enterprise; and the damages which the defendants sought to recoup were not recoverable. They were dependent upon 'a collateral enterprise not shown to be in the contemplation of both of the parties at the time of the sale. See Civil Code (1910), § 4394; Willingham v. Hooven, 74 Ga. 233 (3) (58 Am. Rep. 435); Orr v. Farmers Alliance Co., 97 Ga. 241 (4) (22 S. E. 937); Thornton v. Cordell, 8 Ga. App. 588 (4) (70 S. E. 17); Hall v. Case Threshing Machine Co., 11 Ga. App. 840 (76 S. E. 597); Smalls v. Brennan, 14 Ga. App. 84 (80 S. E. 339); Williams Mfg. Co. v. Schofield’s Sons Co., 21 Ga. App. 23 (2) (93 S. E. 527); Montgomery v. Alexander Lumber Co., 140 Ga. 51 (2) (78 S. E. 413); Upmago Lumber Co. v. Monroe, 148 Ga. 847 (2) (98 S. E. 498).

(a) Under this ruling the court erred in not striking so much of paragraph 5 of the answer as sought recoupment.

(b) This ruling is not to be understood as a decision of whether such damages might be shown recoverable by further allegations.

5.

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Bluebook (online)
120 S.E. 787, 31 Ga. App. 370, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 950, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/horne-ponder-v-o-b-e-j-evans-gactapp-1923.