State v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.

145 A. 172, 34 Del. 158, 4 W.W. Harr. 158, 1929 Del. LEXIS 4
CourtSupreme Court of Delaware
DecidedJanuary 23, 1929
DocketNo. 6
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 145 A. 172 (State v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Delaware primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 145 A. 172, 34 Del. 158, 4 W.W. Harr. 158, 1929 Del. LEXIS 4 (Del. 1929).

Opinion

Wolcott,

Chancellor, delivering the opinion of the court:

In this case no distinction has been sought to be drawn by the attorneys for the parties between charges for freight and charges for demurrage. We shall accordingly assume that no such distinction exists.

The statute under which the bond was given is of a type quite generally found in many of the states, as well as in the Federal jurisdiction. Neither at the árgument nor in the briefs has any suggestion been made that the Delaware statute is in any substantial respect different in meaning and purpose from the statutes found in the other jurisdictions from which counsel have cited cases in support of their respective contentions. Indeed that no difference exists, was conceded; and we shall therefore proceed on the assumption that the concession is warranted.

The point which we are called upon to decide is whether or not transportation services of the kind referred to under the circumstances referred to constitute either the furnishing of material or the performing of labor within the meaning of the bond given under the statute. That they do not constitute the furnishing of material is plain. No contention that they do is made. It is, however, insisted by the plaintiff in error that they constitute the performing of labor within the meaning of the statute and correspondingly of the bond given in obedience thereto.

The bond being a statutory one, we are to look to the statute whose language it follows for its meaning. In examining [162]*162the statute, two questions arise in connection with its application to such a state of facts as the record in this case discloses.

First—does the service or labor of transporting materials to be used in the public work and actually used therein lie outside the protection of the statute because of the fact that the place of rendering it was distant from the site of the work? In commenting on the Federal statute applicable in cases of this kind, the court in U. S., to Use of Sabine, etc., Co. v. Hyatt, et al. (C. C. A.), 92 F. 442, stated that “the labor which Congress intended to protect, by the act under discussion, is evidently labor used directly upon the public work, claims for which would be made by the laborers primarily against the work; thus impeding, possibly, the prosecution of the work and hampering the government officers.” That case excluded from the statute’s scope and consequently from the surety’s obligation a charge by a common carrier for freight. The case adopts the strict construction view which is applied to mechanics’ lien statutes to the effect that the labor and materials must go directly into the work and not be open to the criticism of remoteness therefrom. Subsequent cases, however, are inconsistent with this rule of strict construction as will appear from the citations of authority about to follow. Before citing these authorities it may be well to observe that their results clearly justify the remark of the court in U. S. for Use of Hastings Co. v. Lowrance, et al. (C. C. A.), 252 F. 122, that such statutes as this and the surety bonds given thereunder “should be liberally, not narrowly, construed.” See, also, Maryland Casualty Co. v. Ohio River Gravel Co. (C. C. A.), 20 F. (2d) 514; American Surety Co. v. Lawrenceville Cement Co. (C. C.), 110 F. 717.

Coming now to the citations of authority, we note the following cases in which the claim was allowed as within the statute and bond given thereunder: Title Guaranty & Trust Co. v. Crane Co., 219 U. S. 24, 31 S. Ct. 140, 55 L. Ed. 72 (furnishing patterns to the contractor to be used in its moulding department to make castings which went into the vessel contracted to be built); U. S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. U. S. ex rel. Bartlett, 231 U. S. 237, 34 S. Ct. 88, 58 L. Ed. 200, affirming (C. C. A.) 189 F. 339 (supplying labor [163]*163for the contractor in quarrying stone in a quarry fifty miles distant from the public work, transportation of the rock, labor of carpenters and blacksmiths in repairing cars and tracks used in the transportation, and wages of stablemen who fed and drove the horses which pulled the cars); U. S. for Use of Hastings Co. v. Lowrance, supra (feed furnished for horses and mules used in hauling and dumping earth for a levee); U. S. to Use of Boyer, et al., v. Port Deposit Quarry Co., et al. (D. C.), 272 F. 698 (rent of derrick or lighter used in transporting stone from quarry to place of deposit designated in contract and in depositing them there); Taylor, et al., v. Connett, et al. (C. C. A.), 277 F. 945 (rent of scows rented in New York by one who contracted with the contractor to transport stone from a quarry located a considerable distance from Cape Lookout, N. C., where contractor was building breakwater under contract with the United States); Early & Daniel Co. v. American Surety Co. (C. C. A.), 5 F. (2d) 670 (hay and livestock feed consumed by livestock used in course of construction of road); Maryland Casualty Co. v. Ohio River Gravel Co., supra (repair of trucks used on the work, and gasoline and oil furnished for their operation, notwithstanding they may have been supplied at a place removed from the work); Brogan v. National Surety Co., 246 U. S. 257, 38 S. Ct. 250, 62 L. Ed. 703, L. R. A. 1918D, 776 (groceries and provisions furnished to contractor to board laborers, some on barges and some in tents, who worked on a channel deepening operation).

In the last-cited case, the Supreme Court uses this language— “This court has repeatedly refused to limit the application of the act to labor and materials directly [italics ours] incorporated into the public work.” Though authority may be found to the contrary, yet we think the modern cases are in harmony with the rule thus indicated as settled in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Reason harmonizes with this result for, taking the particular case in hand as an illustration, the labor of transporting slag to be used in the construction of the road contributed as materially and substantially to the work’s completion as did the labor of dumping, hauling, mixing and spreading it on the ground. The latter is impossible in the absence of the former. There would be [164]*164as much reason in excluding the one from the term “labor” performed on the work as the other. It does not seem to us that the services rendered to a contractor can be made to depend on the mere circumstance of the place where rendered for its admission into the category of labor performed in the prosecution of the work. They ought rather to depend on the nature "of the services and whether they have in a proximate sense contributed to the work’s prosecution and completion.

With that as the test, labor and materials have been held as not too remote under the circumstances referred to in the cases above cited. That transportation of materials for a contractor in order that he might have them on hand for incorporation in the work is the performing of labor within the meaning of the statute and the bond has been specifically held in Title Guaranty & Trust Co. v. Crane Co., supra, where a claim for cartage and towage was allowed, as well as the claim for drawings and patterns before referred to. In American Surety Co. v. Lawrenceville Cement Co. (C. C.), 110 F.

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Bluebook (online)
145 A. 172, 34 Del. 158, 4 W.W. Harr. 158, 1929 Del. LEXIS 4, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-aetna-casualty-surety-co-del-1929.