Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. v. National Carbon Co.

268 F. 46, 1920 U.S. App. LEXIS 2276
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 29, 1920
DocketNo. 3287
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 268 F. 46 (Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. v. National Carbon Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Miami Cycle & Mfg. Co. v. National Carbon Co., 268 F. 46, 1920 U.S. App. LEXIS 2276 (6th Cir. 1920).

Opinion

DENISON, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). [1] Defendant’s first contention is that the starters were not “exactly as per sample.” This contention arises under conditions which require it to be carefully scrutinized. Although about one-half of the starters contracted for were shipped and received, and most of them were paid for, and the record contains a body of correspondence between the parties extending over several months with reference to the imperfections of the starter, and the oral testimony shows discussions and negotiations between them on the same subject for a long period, the claim that the starters were not like the sample was never distinctly made until the answer was filed. The substance of all the complaints made was that the starter did not perform in accordance with a supposed warranty, and a lack of correspondence with the sample was, at the most, only suggested by the complaint that “some parts seem to be made of the wrong material.”

Coming to the trial of this issue — difference between sample and starters — we find that the alleged discrepancies 'consist in changes in design, in the materials and in quality of workmanship. So far as concerns changes in design, the undisputed testimony is that they were of unsubstantial character, and were agreed upon between the engineers for the respective parties before quantity production commenced. The one later change had reference to the size of one part, caused by defendant’s mistake, and discovered after the first 100 had been made, and corrected by furnishing a fitting washer, all as agreed upon by, and to the satisfaction of, both parties. Clearly, in this class of discrepancy, there is nothing to justify rejection.

As to difference in materials used: It appears that the back plate, in the sample, had been “roughed out” from a piece of steel boiler plate, while, in the later manufactured starters, it was a gray iron casting. The evidence also tends to show that the ratchets and dogs in the sample were manufactured by hand from tool steel, while, in the later starters, they were made by the drop-forging process, from a steel suitable for that purpose, and of qualities not wholly the same as tool steel. No other discrepancies in materials are suggested. Both of these are dependent upon, and incidental to, the difference between production of a sample by hand work and quantity production by ordinary factory processes, and it is not open to defendant to rely upon either of them.

The contract was for a large quantity. The correspondence shows that defendant knew plaintiff was intending to manufacture, not by .hand, but by the use of jigs, dies, etc. After the making of the contract, the plaintiff expended a large amount of time and money' in the making of these preparations for quantity production, and then, before going on, submitted for approval another sample manufactured by these methods. This sample defendant passed upon and approved, [49]*49save for some slight changes which were made by agreement.1 Then quantity production began, and defendant received and paid for several hundred. 'Defendant does not claim that it ever supposed the back plate, with its right-angled posts, would be cut out by hand from a thick steel plate like the sample. Defendant was expert in the general methods of metal working, and knew that such a method of making would be commercially impossible. Nor does it claim that it supposed plaintiff would use for the ratchets and dogs any grade of steel not workable by the drop-forging process. The substitution of the cast-iron plate was known to defendant from the beginning, and not objected to. Such substitutions of material as were necessarily incidental to quantity manufacture must be deemed within the contemplation of the parties in making such a contract, and did not constitute a departure therefrom.

Whether to such a substitution it was reasonably necessary that this back plate shoud be of gray iron casting and of the specific thickness here adopted might have been open to question. Perhaps, within the limits of good manufacturing methods, it might have been made of stronger material or of heavier form. Those questions are not open to defendant. A back plate made as these were was considered by plaintiff to be the one called for by the contract, and it was tendered to the defendant as such; no one can say that the tender was not in good faith, or that the iron back plate may not have heen a full, substantial compliance with the contract; and the defendant accepted it as a compliance with the contract. This acceptance was not only of the special second sample tendered for that purpose, but continued over a course of business lasting through some months. Under such conditions, defendant cannot say that the article it received is not the article which it bought. See cases cited in 23 R. C. L. “Sales,” § 264; Marmet Co. v. People’s Co. (C. C. A. 6) 226 Fed. 646, 651, 141 C. C. A. 402. Of course, this conclusion is not inconsistent with the existence of an implied warranty of fitness of material, which'might survive some measure of acceptance. That subject is considered later.

There is nothing to indicate that there were any differences in workmanship, beyond those which would be inherent in the contemplated method of manufacture, and these cannot avail defendant. The only matter carrying a suggestion of difference in the quality of the workmanship is that which is discussed hereafter under1' the subject of reasonable fitness, and with reference to clearance; but the testimony is even less sufficient to show a difference in this respect between the model and the mass of the starters than it is to indicate unfitness.

It is said that these conclusions depend upon defendant’s estoppel, and that plaintiff cannot recover on that .ground, because no estoppel was specially pleaded in reply to defendant’s answer, as the Ohio pleading rules are said to require. We do not so regard the situation. If defendant kept silent while it knew that plaintiff was expending money [50]*50preparing to make, and expecting to tender under a contract, articles which were a substantial departure from that contract, a pure question of estoppel would arise, and this rule of .pleading would require consideration. In this case, the article furnished was offered, not as a departure, but as the very thing which both parties contemplated, taking into account the expected method of manufacture, and acceptance of the article was confession of identity. If there is an element of estoppel thereby involved, it is sufficiently pleaded, because the declaration alleges that the starters were tendered and accepted as being the contract articles.

Perhaps, as to the starters not delivered when defendant repudiated the contract, there is more color of estoppel, because, as to them, defendant never accepted; hut, even if defendant’s obligation .to 'accept these be considered as in some measure dependent upon estoppel, rather than upon that construction of the contract which had' become fixed and settled by the action of both parties, the fact of the estoppel is so far merely an incidental step in reaching the result that not even a strict rule can require it to be pleaded.

It is rather vaguely suggested that the jury would be authorized to find the existence of substantial differences between the model and the starters, because the model worked satisfactorily and the starters did not. In many cases, such an inference might be justified from that fact alone.

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268 F. 46, 1920 U.S. App. LEXIS 2276, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/miami-cycle-mfg-co-v-national-carbon-co-ca6-1920.