Manistee Navigation Co. v. Filer

151 N.W. 1025, 185 Mich. 302, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 965
CourtMichigan Supreme Court
DecidedApril 6, 1915
DocketDocket No. 65
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 151 N.W. 1025 (Manistee Navigation Co. v. Filer) 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
Manistee Navigation Co. v. Filer, 151 N.W. 1025, 185 Mich. 302, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 965 (Mich. 1915).

Opinion

Moore, J.

This suit is on a written contract between the plaintiff company and various lumbermen in Manistee and vicinity who had been lumbering on the Manistee river for a number of years. The purposes of the plaintiff company and certain portions of the contract which is the subject matter of this litigation are stated in the opinion of this court in the case of Manistee Navigation Co. v. Sands Salt & Lumber Co., 174 Mich. 1 (140 N. W. 565), which case was reversed and sent back for a new trial.

The plaintiff company, on the 23d day of June, 1905, entered into a contract with the defendant company and the other named log owners, who had been driving logs on the Manistee river for a great many years, for the purpose of raising, driving, and delivering the sunken and deadhead logs in the Manistee river to the mills of the various log owners for a price agreed upon between them, as appears in the contract. The plaintiff built and equipped two scows with hoisting machinery in 1905, and began its work of lifting the logs under the contract that fall. During- the season of 1906 four more scows were built, and in the season of 1907 two more scows were put in operation, [305]*305making in all eight. In 1908 two were burned by the forest fires which prevailed that year, and they were not rebuilt. So in 1909 six scows were operated.

The logs lifted in 1905, which were sufficiently dried out for that purpose, were driven down the river and delivered in the summer of 1906, and after 1905 logs were lifted and a drive was made each year, including 1909, when the plaintiff, in the fall of that year, ceased its operations, owing, as it claims, to the continued failure and refusal of the defendant and the other parties to the contract to pay it the balance of the contract price for logs delivered that year and prior years.

A verdict was had in the instant case for the plaintiff in the sum of $1,219.54, judgment being had thereon, and the case is brought here by writ of error. The questions raised by the 73 assignments of error have been conveniently grouped by counsel for appellants as follows:

(1) The court erred in refusing to allow the defendant to prove that the plaintiff company had never received a dollar from its stockholders, to whom its certificates of stock were issued without consideration, and that said company was without financial standing, as bearing upon the question of the plaintiff’s right to maintain its suit upon this executory contract on the -claimed breach of contract by defendant for its failure to pay the bill against it of December 2, 1909, found in the record at pages 62 and 63.
(2) The court erred in the admission of evidence and in permitting the jury to render a verdict for plaintiff for interest charged against the defendant on claimed balances, which included damages, and without any previous demand having been made therefor.'
(3) The court erred in permitting evidence to be introduced, over defendant’s objection, as to the meaning of the words “fair and equitable scale according to Doyle’s rule,” as contained in said con[306]*306tract, and in submitting said question to the jury to be determined by them as a question of fact.
(4) The court erred in receiving evidence and in allowing the jury to render a verdict in excess of the amount shown by the boom company’s scale and the inspection agreed upon under the contract, without showing any fraud or gross mistake in such agreed scale or inspection.
(5) The court erred in its ruling that the defendant’s failure to pay the bill of December 2, 1909, constituted a breach of .the contract sued upon,_ when the undisputed evidence shows that both plaintiff and defendant then knew that, through plaintiff’s fraudulent conduct, said bill was largely in excess of the amount due (if anything was due) from plaintiff to defendant.
(6) That, the evidence being undisputed that the plaintiff was guilty of frequent and continuous breaches of this executory contract, the court erred in permitting the plaintiff to sue and recover under the express terms of the contract, for the money claimed to be due thereon from the defendant to the plaintiff.
(7) That the court erred in permitting the plaintiff to abandon this executory contract in 1909 (which by its terms was not to be completed until September 1, 1913), and to sue and recover on said contract the contract price for said work after the contract had been breached and abandoned by the plaintiff.
(8) The court erred in rulings regarding evidence, and should have directed a verdict in favor of the defendant, for the reason that no evidence was introduced in the case showing or tending to show the value to the defendant of the services claimed to have been performed by the plaintiff under the contract, or the value of the benefit the defendant had received therefrom, and that there was no basis for a verdict of the jury in favor of the plaintiff and as against the defendant, as it was undisputed that the contract had not been fully performed and completed by the plaintiff, but that it was in default.

I. This very question was raised in the case of Manistee Navigation Co. v. Salt & Lumber Co., supra, on proper assignments of error, but this court did not discuss it in the opinion therein filed. We did not [307]*307then consider, nor do we now, that the refusal of the court to allow inquiry into the financial condition of the plaintiff company was error, for the reason that it was not material or prejudicial to the defendant’s rights.

II. With reference to the question of interest raised under this heading, it appears that the contract provides in terms as follows:

“On the 10th day of each month payment to be made for all logs delivered to the respective mills of the said parties of the second part during the preceding month, less any amount that may be due said second parties by reason of the advance money above mentioned.”

It thus appears that the contract itself expressly . fixes the time when the delivery charges shall be paid, which debt becomes due on the 10th of each month for the deliveries made during the preceding month. Under the terms of the contract, the plaintiff company was entitled to the payment of the money when due, and the general rule of law is that when there is a contract to pay money at a certain time, and the money is not paid when due, interest is recoverable on the amount in default from the date when it should have been paid. 22 Cyc. p. 1539.

Ill and IV. The contract also provides as follows:

“It is further mutually understood and agreed that all logs scaled under this contract shall be scaled by scalers mutually agreeable to the parties hereto; said scalers to make in all cases a fair and equitable scale, and according to ‘Doyle’s rule,’ and all logs delivered to said second parties’ mills are to be scaled by the scalers employed by the Manistee Boom Company; it being understood and agreed that, in the absence of said boom company scalers, then the same are to be sealed by scalers mutually agreed upon between the parties hereto, all logs scaled at the mills to be done without expense to said first party.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
151 N.W. 1025, 185 Mich. 302, 1915 Mich. LEXIS 965, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/manistee-navigation-co-v-filer-mich-1915.