Hydrex Silent Exhaust Works v. Seager Engine Works

155 N.W. 432, 189 Mich. 431, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 803
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 21, 1915
DocketDocket No. 129
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 155 N.W. 432 (Hydrex Silent Exhaust Works v. Seager Engine Works) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Michigan Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hydrex Silent Exhaust Works v. Seager Engine Works, 155 N.W. 432, 189 Mich. 431, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 803 (Mich. 1915).

Opinion

Moore, J.

The trial judge charged the jury in part as follows:

“The plaintiff, the Hydrex Silent Exhaust Works, a corporation, and manufacturers of the Hydrex silent exhaust silencer, claims that the defendant, the Seager Engine Works, a corporation, was employed to manufacture certain gasoline engines for the Lackawanna Manufacturing Company to be equipped with the Hydrex engine exhaust silencer, and to obtain the silencer their plant agreed with plaintiff upon terms of purchase, and gave plaintiff orders for 275 silencers to be specially made; that they manufactured the silencers ordered, and delivered 146 of them to defendant, for which the defendant has paid, and had the remainder for delivery and offered delivery of them to defendant, and defendant refused to take them; that, being a special make, the silencers were held in plaintiff’s storeroom subject to defendant’s order until the storeroom burned in January, 1914, when they were destroyed by fire.
“This suit was brought to recover the value of the silencers ordered by defendant and manufactured on such orders by plaintiff and refused to be taken and paid for by defendant. Defendant denies that it ever entered into contract with plaintiff, and denies that it ever gave orders of purchase of the silencers. It admits making a contract with the Lackawanna Manufacturing Company under which it was to manufacture gasoline engines for the Lackawanna Manufacturing Company to be equipped with silencers; that it was [433]*433agreed with Mr. Hall, who made the contract for the Lackawanna Manufacturing Company, and also was president and general manager of both the Lackawanna Company and the plaintiff company, that it would be absurd for the plaintiff company to sell silencers to defendant to go with the gasoline engines made for the Lackawanna Company, because, if that was done, a charge of 10 per cent, would have to be added merely for their passing through this shop, and because of the relations between the plaintiff company and the Lackawanna Company the silencers should be furnished to the Lackawanna Company by the plaintiff, and not by the plaintiff to defendant. Defendant also claims that the orders given by its purchasing agent to plaintiff for silencers were not purchasing orders, but were memorandum under the agreement with Mr. Hall that the plaintiff might know what silencers it furnished the Lackawanna Company through the defendant. * * *
“Plaintiff, in order to recover, must satisfy you by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a contract of sale of the silencers to defendant. A contract of sale, to be valid, must designate the kind of articles, the subject of the sale and the price to be paid; and such a contract may be partly in writing and partly verbal, provided it has been performed in part after its making. So in this case the parties were at liberty to contract for the silencers, and to agree verbally upon the price to be paid for the same. And if you find that with an agreement as to the price of the silencers to be paid for on orders given for the same defendant gave written orders for specified silencers, and such orders were accepted by plaintiff and performed in part by delivery of some of the silencers, then there was a valid contract, and, if plaintiff made the silencers under such a contract, then defendant was under obligation to take and pay for the same when offered delivery of what it had ordered. * * *
“You are to have in mind that, in order to make a contract binding between parties, the minds of the parties must have met upon the subject-matter of the contract. One may not be held to have made a contract unless it was his intention to make a contract. That intention is to be gathered from the writings entered [434]*434into, providing the writing covers the matter. In case the writing does not cover all of the claimed contract, and a part of it is claimed to have rested in mere words passing between the parties, then the jury should take into consideration, not only the writing, but all the evidence disclosed relating to the intention and understanding of the parties upon the question of contract or no contract. * * *
“Was there a contract made between these parties? Was it understood and agreed between the defendant company and the plaintiff company that the silencers to be used upon the Lackawanna gasoline engine should be the silencer manufactured by the plaintiff company, and that this silencer should be sold and charged to the defendant company? * * *
“Was there a contract under which plaintiff was to manufacture for defendant at agreed prices special designs of silencer, and under which defendant was to accept and pay for the same, or was the manufacture of silencers for the Lackawanna Manufacturing Company, and not for defendant, and the dealings between plaintiff and defendant relative to the silencers less than contract relations for the sale by plaintiff to defendant and purchase by defendant from plaintiff of the silencers in question? * * *
“Was it the intention of these parties, the one in giving the order, and the other in making the silencer, that there was a contract binding upon the defendant to buy and take, and upon the plaintiff to make and' to sell, the silencer in question? If any order was given as a purchase.and accepted by the plaintiff, and the goods made and some of them delivered, and the rest of them ready for delivery and tender of delivery made, then there was a good contract. If the order was given, on the other hand, under ah arrangement that it should operate merely as a memoranda, so that it might be known afterwards, in case of inquiry, what silencers, if any, were furnished to go with the Lackawanna Company engine through the shop of the defendant, and without a contract that such silencer should be paid for by the defendant company, then there was no contract upon the giving of these orders. I mean by that this: These orders may be explained. The defendant is at liberty to come in here and ex[435]*435plain the circumstances under which they were given so far as such circumstances were known to the plaintiff. The defendant claims that the orders were given after an agreement between the defendant company and the plaintiff company that the silencers should be furnished, not to defendant company, but to the Lackawanna Company. * * *
“If the silencers were made to order, then, when completed and tendered defendant, in case they were tendered, and in case you find there was a valid con-' tract, then they became the property of the defendant, and plaintiff might store them subject to defendant’s order, and in case of their destruction by fire the loss was that of defendant, and does not excuse defendant from paying for the same.
“Now, it is the claim of the plaintiff in this case that this was an order for a specially made silencer, and because of its special make upon the order of the defendant it completed them and tendered them to the defendant company, and upon its refusal to take them, the title having passed, it held them as the property of the defendant company and subject to defendant’s order; that in January, 1914, while they were being stored subject to defendant’s order, they were destroyed by fire.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
155 N.W. 432, 189 Mich. 431, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 803, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hydrex-silent-exhaust-works-v-seager-engine-works-mich-1915.