Kountz v. Kirkpatrick & Lyons

72 Pa. 376, 1873 Pa. LEXIS 24

• Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
• Decided: January 6, 1873
• Docket: No. 86
• Status: Published

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered, by

Agnew, J.

— The second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth errors, are not well assigned, for all the answers of the court to the points were omitted. When a court simply refuses a point, the error is well assigned by reciting the point, and stating that it was refused. But when the judge answers specially, in order to introduce a qualification he deems necessary to make his instruction correct, the answer must be recited as well as the point. We shall not decline considering, however, all the important questions; and in order to discuss them, we may state succinctly the nature of the case. On the 7th of June 1869, Kountz sold to Kirkpatrick ■& Lyon, two thousand barrels of crude petroleum, to be delivered at his option, at any time from the date, until the 31st of December 1869, for cash on delivery, at thirteen and a half cents a gallon. On the 24th of June 1869, Kirkpatrick and Lyon assigned this contract to Fisher & Brothers. Kountz failed to deliver the oil. He defends on the ground that Kirkpatrick & Lyons, and others holding like contracts for delivery of oil, entered into a combination to raise the price, by buying up large quantities of oil, and holding it till the expiration of the year 1869, and thus to compel the sellers of oil on option contracts, to pay a heavy difference for non-delivery. Fisher & Brothers, the assignees of Kountz’s contract, were not in the combination, and the principal questions are whether they are affected by the acts of Kirkpatrick & Lyons, subsequent to the assignment; whether notice of the assignment to Kountz was necessary to protect them, and what is the true measure of damages. The court below held that Fisher & Brothers, as assignees of the contract, were not affected by the acts of Kirkpatrick & Lyons, as members of the combination in the following October and subsequently, and that notice in this case was not essential to the protection of Kountz.

The common-law rule as to the assignability of choses in action ño longer prevails, but in equity the assignee is looked upon as the true owner of the chose. He may set off the demand as his own: Morgan v. Bank of North America, 8 S. & R. 73; Ramsey’s Appeal, 2 Watts 228. The assignee takes the chose subject to the existing equities between the original parties before assignment, and also to payment and other defences to the instrument itself, after the assignment and before notice of it; but he cannot be affected by collateral transactions, secret trusts, or acts unconnected with the subject of the contract: Davis v. Barr, 9 S. & R. 137; Beckley v. Eckert, 3 Barr 292 ; Mott v. Clark, 9 Id. 399 ; Taylor v. Gitt, 10 Id. 428; Northampton Bank v. Balliet, 8 W. & S. 318; Corsen v. Craig, 1 Wash. C. C. R. 424; 1 Parsons, on Cont. 193, 196; 2 Story on Cont., § 396, n.

The act of Kirkpatrick & Lyons, complained of as members of an unlawful combination to raise the price of oil, was long subsequent to their assignment of Kountz’s contract, and was a mere tort. The contract was affected only by its results as an independent act. It does not seem just, therefore, to visit this effect upon Fisher & Brothers, the antecedent assignees. The act is wholly collateral to the ownership of the chose itself, and there is nothing to link it to the chose, so as to bind the assignors and assignees together. After the assignment, there being no guaranty, the assignors had no interest in the performance of this particular contract, and no motive, therefore, arising out of it to raise the price on Kountz. The acts of Kirkpatrick & Lyons seem, therefore, to have no greater or other bearing on this contract than the acts of any other members of the combination, who were strangers to the contract.

In regard to notice of the assignment to Kountz, it is argued, that having had no notice of it, if he knew of the conspiracy to raise the price of oil, and thus to affect his contract, and that Kirkpatrick & Lyons were parties to it, he might have relied on that fact as a defence, and refused to deliver the oil, and claimed on the trial a verdict for merely nominal damages for his breach of his contract. Possibly in such a speoial case, want of notice might have constituted an equity, but the answer to this case is, that no such point was made in the court below, and there does not seem to be any evidence that Kountz knew of the conspiracy, and Kirkpatrick & Lyons’s privity, and relying on these facts, desisted from purchasing oil to fulfil his contract with them. As the case stood before the court below, we discover no error in thé answers of the learned judge on this part of it.

The next question is upon the proper measure of damages. In the sale of chattels, the general rule is, that the measure is the difference between the contract price and the market value of the article at the time and place of delivery under the contract. It is unnecessary to cite authority for this well established rule, but as this case raises a novel and extraordinary question between the true market value of the article, and a stimulated market price, created by artificial and fraudulent practices, it is necessary to fix the true meaning of the rule itself, before we can approach the real question. Ordinarily, when an article of sale is in the market, and has a market value, there is no difference between its value and the market price, and the law adopts the latter as the proper evidence of the value. This is not, however, because value and price are really convertible terms, but only because they are ordinarily so in a fair market. The primary meaning of value is worth, and this worth is made up of the useful or estimable qualities of the thing: See Webster’s and Worcester’s Dictionaries. Price, on the other hand, is the sum in money or other equivalent set upon an article .by a seller, which he demands for it: Id. Ibid. Yalue and price are, therefore, not synonymes, or the necessary equivalents of each other, though commonly, market value and market price are legal equivalents. When we examine the authorities, we find also that the most accurate writers use the phrase market value, not market price. Mr. Sedgwick, in his standard work on the measure of damages, 4th ed. p. 260, says : “ Where contracts for the value of chattels are broken by the vendor’s failing to deliver property according to the terms of the bargain, it seems to be well settled, as a general rule, both in England and the United States, that the measure of damages is the difference between the contract price and the market value of the article at the time it should be delivered upon the ground; that this is the plaintiff’s real loss, and that with this sum, he can go into the market and supply himself with the same article from another vendor.” Judge Rogers uses the same term in Smethurst v. Woolston, 5 W. & S. 109 : “ The value of the article at or about the time it is to be delivered, is the measure of damages in a suit by the vendee against the vendor for a breach of the contract.” So said C. J. Tilghman, in Girard v. Taggart, 5 S. & R. 32. Judge Sergeant, also, in O’Conner v. Forster, 10 Watts 422, and in Mott v. Danforth, 6 Id. *308. But as even accurate writers do not always use words in a precise sense, it would be unsatisfactory to rely on the common use of a word only, in making a nice distinction between terms. It is therefore proper to inquire into the true legal idea of damages in order to determine the proper definition of the term value. Except in those cases where oppression, fraud, malice or negligence enter into the question, “the declared object (says Mr. Sedgwick, in his work on Damages) is to give compensation to the party injured for the actual loss sustained,” 4th ed., pp. 28, 29; also, pp. 36, 37. Among the many authorities he gives, he quotes the language of C. J. Shippen, in Bussy v. Donaldson, 4 Dallas 206. “As to the assessment of damages '(said he), it is a rational and legal principle, that the compensation should be equivalent to the injury.” “The rule,” said C. J. Gibson, “is to give actual compensation, by graduating the amount of the damages exactly to the extent of the loss.” “ The measure is the actual, not the speculative loss Forsyth v. Palmer, 2 Harris 97. Thus, compensation being the true purpose of the law, it is obvious that the means employed, in other words, the evidence to ascertain compensation, must be such as truly reaches this end.

It is equally obvious, when we consider its true nature, that as evidence, the market price of an article is only a means of arriving at compensation; it is not itself the value of the article, but is the evidence of value. The law adopts it as a natural inference of fact, but not as a conclusive legal presumption. It stands as a criterion of value, because it is a common test of the ability to purchase the thing. But to assert that the price asked in the market for an article is the true and only test of value, is to abandon the proper object of damages, viz., compensation, in all those cases where the market evidently does not afford the true measure of value. This thought is well expressed by Lewis, O. J., in Bank of Montgomery v. Reese, 2 Casey 146. “ The paramount rule in assessing damages (he says), is that every person unjustly deprived of his rights, should at least be fully compensated for the injury he sustained. Where articles have a determinate value and an unlimited production, the general rule is to give their value at the time the owner was deprived of them, with interest to the time of verdict. This rule has been adopted because of its convenience, and because it in general answers the object of the law, which is to compensate for the injury. In relation to such articles, the supply usually keeps pace with the demand, and the fluctuations in the value are so inconsiderable as to justify the courts in disregarding them for the sake of convenience and uniformity. In these cases, the reason why the value at the time of conversion, with interest, generally reaches the justice of the case, is that when the owner is deprived of the articles, he may purchase others at that price. But it is manifest that this would not remunerate him where the article could not be obtained elsewhere, or where from restrictions on its production, or other causes, its price is neóessarily subject to considerable fluctuation.” This shows that the market price is not an invariable standard, and that the converse of the case then before Judge Lewis is equally true — that is to say— when the market price is unnaturally inflated by unlawful and fraudulent practices, it cannot be the true means of ascertaining# what is just compensation. It is as unjust to the seller to give the purchaser more than just compensation, as it is to the purchaser to give him less. Right upon this point, we have the language of this court in the case of a refusal Toy a purchaser to accept: Andrews v. Hoover, 8 Watts 240. It is said: “The jury is bound by a measure of damages where there is one, but not always by a particular means for its ascertainment. Now the measure in a case like the present, is the difference between the price contracted to be paid and the value of the thing when it ought to have been accepted; and though a resale is a convenient and often satisfactory means, it does not follow that it is, nor was it said in Girard v. Taggert, to be the only one. On the contrary, the propriety of the direction there, that the jury were not bound by it, if they could find another more in accordance with the justice of the case, seems to have been admitted; the very thing complained of here.” Judge Strong took the same view in Trout v. Kennedy, 11 Wright 393. That was the case of a trespasser, and the jury had been told that the plaintiff was entitled to the just and full value of the property, and if at the time of the trespass the market was depressed, too much importance was not to be given to -that fact. “ If (says Judge Strong) at any particular time, there be no market demand for an article, it is not of course on that account of no value. What a thing will bring in the market at a given time, is perhaps the measure of its value then; but it is not the only one.” These cases plainly teach that value and market price are not always convertible terms; and certainly there can be no difference in justice or law, in an unnatural depression and an unnatural exaltation in the market price — neither is the true and only measure of value.

These general principles in the doctrine of damages and authorities, prove that an inflated speculative market price, not the result ' of natural causes, but of artificial means to stimulate prices by unlawful combinations for the purposes of gain, cannot be a legitimate means of estimating just compensation. It gives to the purchaser more than he ought to have, and compels the seller to pay more than he ought to give, and it is therefore not a just criterion. There is a case in our own state, bearing strongly on this point: Blydenburgh et al. v. Welsh et al., Baldwin’s Rep. 331. Judge Baldwin had charged the jury in these words : “ If you are satisfied from the evidence, that there was on that day a fixed price in the market, you must be governed by it; if the evidence is doubtful as to the price, and witnesses vary in their statements, you must adopt that which you think best accords with the proof in the case.” In granting a new trial, Judge Hopkinson said: “ It is the price — the market price — of the article that is to furnish the measure of damages. Now what is the price of a thing, particularly the market price? We consider it to be the value, the rate at which the thing is sold. To make a market, there must be buying and selling, purchase and sale. If the owner of an article holds it at a price which nobody will give for it, can that be said to be its market value? Men sometimes put fantastical prices upon their property. For reasons personal and peculiar, they may rate it much above what any one would give for it. Is that the value? Further, the holders of an article, flour, for instance, under a false rumor, which, if true, would augment its value, may suspend their sales, or put a price upon it, not according to its value in the actual state of the market, but according to what in their opinion will be its market price or value, provided the rumor shall prove to be true. In such a ease, it is clear, that the asking price is not the worth of the thing on the given day, but what it is supposed it will be worth at a future day, if the contingency shall happen which is to give it this additional value. To take such a price as the rule of damages, is to make the defendant pay what in truth never was the value of the article, and to give to the plaintiff a profit by a breach of the contract, which he never would have made by its performance.”

The case of suspended sales upon a rumor tending to enhance the price, put by Judge Hopkinson, bears no comparison to the case alleged here, where a combination is intentionally formed to buy up oil, hold it till the year is out, and thus force the market price up purposely to affect existing contracts, and compel the sellers to pay heavy damages for non-fulfilment of their bargains. In the same case, Judge Hopkinson further said: “We did not intend that they (the jury) should go out of the limits of the market price, nor to take as that price whatever the holders of the coffee might choose to ask for it; substituting a fictitious, unreal value, which nobody would give, for that at which the article might be bought or sold.” “ In determining,” says an eminent writer on contracts, “ what is the market value of property at any particular time, the jury may sometimes take a wide range; for this is not always ascertainable by precise facts, but must sometimes rest on opinion; and it would seem that neither party ought to gain or lose by a mere fancy price, or an inflated and accidental value, suddenly put in force by some speculative movement, and as sud-denly passing away. The question of damages by a market value is peculiarly one for a juryParsons on Contracts, vol. 2, p. 482, ed. 1857. In Smith v. Griffith, 3 Hill 337-8, C. J. Nelson said: “ I admit that a mere speculating price of the article, got .up by the contrivance of a few interested dealers, is not the true test. The law, in regulating the measure of damages, contemplates a range of the entire market, and the average of prices, as thus found, running through a reasonable period of time. Neither a sudden and transient inflation, nor a depression of prices, should control the question. These are often accidental, promoted by interested and illegitimate combinations, for temporary, special and selfish objects, independent of the objects of lawful commerce;'a forced and violent perversion of the laws of trade, not within the contemplation of the regular dealer, and not deserving to be regarded as a proper basis upon which to determine the value, when the fact becomes material in the administration of justice.” I may close these sayings of eminent jurists with the language of Chief Justice Gibson, upon stock-jobbing contracts; Wilson v. Davis, 5 W. & S. 523: “ To have stipulated,” says he, “ for a right to recruit on separate account, would have given to the agreement an appearance of trick, like those of stock-jobbing contracts, to deliver a given number of shares at a certain day, in which the seller’s performance has been forestalled by what is called cornering; in other words, buying up all the floating shares in the market. These contracts, like other stock-jobbing transactions, in which parties deal upon honor, are seldom subjected to the test of judicial experiment, but they would necessarily be declared fraudulent.”

Without adding more, I think it is conclusively shown that what is called the market price, or the quotations of the articles for a given day, is not always the only evidence of actual value, but that the true value may be drawn from other sources, when it is shown that the price for the particular day had been unnaturally inflated. It remains only to ascertain whether the defendant gave such evidence as to require the court to submit to the jury to ascertain and determine the fair market value of crude oil per gallon, on the 31st of December 1869, as demanded by the defendant in his fifteenth point. There was evidence from which the jury might have adduced the following facts, viz.: That in the month of October 1869, a number of persons of large capital, and among them Kirkpatrick & Lyons, combined together to purchase crude oil, and hold it until the close of the year 1869; that these persons were the holders, as purchasers, of a large number of sellers’ option contracts, similar to the one in suit; that they bought oil largely, and determined to hold it from the market until the year 187 0 before selling; that oil, in consequence of this combination, ran up in price, in the face of an increased supply, until the 31st day of December 1869, reaching the price of seventeen to eighteen cents per gallon, and then suddenly dropped as soon as the year closed. Major Frew, one of the number, says: It was our purpose to take the oil, pay for it, and keep it until January 1st 1870, otherwise we would have been heading the market on ourselves. Mr. Long says that on the 3d of January 1870 he sold oil to Fisher & Brother (the plaintiffs) at thirteen cents a gallon, and could find no other purchaser at that price. Several witnesses, dealers in oil, testify that they knew of no natural cause to create such a rise in price, or to make the difference in price from December to January. It was testified, on the contrary, that the winter production of oil was greater in December 1869 than in former years by several thousand barrels per day, a fact tending to reduce the price, when not sustained by other means. Mr. Benn says he knew no cause for the sudden fall in price on the 1st January 1870, except that the so-called combination ceased to buy at the last of December 1869.

It was, therefore, a fair question for the jury to determine whether the price which was demanded for oil on the last day of December 1869 was not a fictitious, unnatural, inflated and temporary price, the result of a combination to “bull the market,” as it is termed, and to compel sellers to pay a false and swollen price in order to fulfil their contracts. If so, then such price was not a fair test of the value of the oil, and the jury would be at liberty to determine, from the prices before and after the day, and from other sources of information, the actual market value of the oil on the 31st of December 1869. Any other cause would be unjust and injurious to fair dealers, and would enable gamblers in the article to avail themselves of their own wrong, and to wrest from honest dealers the fruits of their business. It cannot be possible that a “ corner,” such as took place a few weeks since in the market for the stock of a western railroad company, where shares, worth in the ordinary market about sixty dollars each, were by the secret operations of two or three large capitalists, forced up in a few days to a price over two hundred dollars a share, can be a lawful measure of damages. Men are not to be stripped of their estates by such cruel and wrongful practices; and courts of justice cannot so wholly ignore justice as to assume such a false standard of compensation. Our views upon the effect of the affidavit of defence, on which the learned judge in a great measure ruled the question of damages, will be expressed in the case of Kountz v. The Citizens’ Oil Refining Co., in an opinion to be read immediately.

Judgment reversed, and a venire facias de novo awarded.

Sharswood and Williams, JJ., dissented on the question of the measure of damages.