Washington Freightliner, Inc. v. Shantytown Pier, Inc.

719 A.2d 541, 351 Md. 616, 36 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 425, 1998 Md. LEXIS 641
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedSeptember 8, 1998
Docket38, September Term, 1997
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 719 A.2d 541 (Washington Freightliner, Inc. v. Shantytown Pier, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Washington Freightliner, Inc. v. Shantytown Pier, Inc., 719 A.2d 541, 351 Md. 616, 36 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 425, 1998 Md. LEXIS 641 (Md. 1998).

Opinions

RODOWSKY, Judge.

This case involves the application of the four-year statute of limitations under the Sales Article of the Uniform Commercial Code to breaches of implied warranties in the sale of marine engines. The statute is Maryland Code (1975, 1997 Repl.Vol.), § 2-725 of the Commercial Law Article.1 In relevant part it reads:

“(1) An action for breach of any contract for sale must be commenced within four years after the cause of action has accrued. By the original agreement the parties may reduce the period of limitation to not less than one year but may not extend it.
“(2) A cause of action accrues when the breach occurs, regardless of the aggrieved party’s lack of knowledge of the breach. A breach of warranty occurs when tender of delivery is made, except that where a warranty explicitly extends to future performance of the goods and discovery of the breach must await the time of such performance, the cause of action accrues when the breach is or should have been discovered.”

(Emphasis added).

At issue is whether the statute began to run when the seller caused the engines to be delivered to the boat yard which later installed the engines in a boat that it was constructing for the buyer, or whether the running of the statute was postponed until the engines were “commissioned,” that is, when the boat was subjected to a trial run at sea at various speeds.

The plaintiff, Shantytown Pier, Inc. (Shantytown), is a family business based in Ocean City, Maryland, that owns passen[619]*619ger boats. Shantytown sells fishing trips, nature cruises, and other boating excursions to paying passengers. On March 15, 1990, Shantytown contracted with Lydia Yachts of Stuart, Inc. (Lydia), a boatyard in Stuart, Florida, for the construction of a new 77-foot “party/fishing boat,” the Ocean City Princess (O.C.Princess). Sometime after June 16, 1990, Shantytown purchased for use in the O.C. Princess three MAN D2840LXE 820-horsepower, 10-cylinder engines from Washington Freightliner, Inc. (WFI), one of the defendants. WFI, based in Capitol Heights, Maryland, is an authorized dealer in engines manufactured by another of the defendants, MAN Roland, Inc. (MAN), a German corporation with offices in the United States. The third defendant in this action is Marine Mechanical Systems, Inc. (MMS), an authorized distributor of MAN engines. MMS is based in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Shantytown purchased the three MAN engines at a total price of $163,000, “FOB Pompano Beach, Florida.” The entire purchase price was paid before delivery. MMS caused the engines to be delivered to Lydia no later than September 30, 1990. Lydia completed construction of the O.C. Princess, and it was commissioned on April 20,1991.

On ten separate occasions during nearly four years of operating the O.C. Princess, Shantytown experienced failures of one or another of each of the three engines. Although some of the failures were due to human error, most were due to complications involving faulty pistons. MAN’s agents kept addressing the problems and performing repairs, but the problems, particularly failures related to the pistons, kept recurring. In April 1994, Shantytown, for $30,000, purchased another MAN engine for the O.C. Princess to replace one of the original MAN engines; within months, it too began suffering piston failure.2

[620]*620These failures led Shantytown to file suit on October 6, 1994, against MAN, WFI, and MMS. The complaint alleged breaches of express warranty, of contract, and of the implied warranties of merchantability and of fitness for a particular purpose.

Each defendant moved for summary judgment based, inter alia, on limitations grounds. Judge Theodore R. Esehenburg denied these motions. Prior to trial the plaintiff experienced an eleventh piston failure and decided to replace all three MAN engines with engines manufactured by another company. Three days before trial Shantytown, with leave of court, voluntarily dismissed its express warranty and breach of contract claims, leaving only the implied warranty claims against the three defendants.

At a jury trial with Judge Thomas C. Groton, III presiding, the defendants renewed their limitations argument by a motion for judgment at the conclusion of the plaintifPs case and by a motion for judgment at the conclusion of all the evidence, on which the court reserved both rulings. The jury found that the implied warranties had been breached, that there was an agency relationship between all of the defendants, and that the damages were $236,919.21. The court denied the defendants’ motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

Judge Eschenburg’s order denying the defendants’ motion for summary judgment gave no reasons, but Shantytown had argued that tender of delivery had not occurred until the O.C. Princess was commissioned.

[621]*621At trial the most detailed description of commissioning was given by John Wilhelm who had been in charge of the service and maintenance aspects of the MMS business. His deposition testimony, introduced by Shantytown, reads in relevant part as follows:

“Q [C]an you just give me sort of a general understanding of what it means in your trade to commission engines so that in April of 1991 when you commissioned these three new engines, what kind of things would you do?
“A You have to put a variety of monitoring equipment on the engines in the engine room itself to monitor operating temperatures, pressures, exhaust temperatures, engine room depression, and record the values at a variety of speeds, including wide-open throttle.
“Q Now, are these instruments that you are talking about, are they separate from the normal instruments that the boat would permanently be equipped with?
“A Some boats are equipped with similar instrumentations. During commissioning we generally use our own.
“Q So you take the boat to sea and you operate it for approximately how long?
“A It depends on conditions and a number of things. But there is a prescribed format that MAN has set forward, and you have to complete the forms.
“Q And was that commissioning done in this case without incident?
“A Yes.
“Q So that on or about April 20, 1991, or whatever that precise date was of the commissioning, as far as you were concerned, the engines had been properly installed and tested and seemed to be working properly?
“A The details escape me right now, but as long as all the numbers fell in normal operating parameters, yes. And I believe they did.”

The engines were not commissioned separately from the vessel; rather, both were commissioned simultaneously. Cap[622]*622tain Robert Gowar, one of two captains of the O.C. Princess, spoke of “when we were getting ready to commission the boat and the engine.” Captain Monty Hawkins, the vessel’s other captain, testified that the commissioning process took place “over a couple of different sea trials,” and implied that different individuals may have been present on different days. R.

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Washington Freightliner, Inc. v. Shantytown Pier, Inc.
719 A.2d 541 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, 1998)

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Bluebook (online)
719 A.2d 541, 351 Md. 616, 36 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 425, 1998 Md. LEXIS 641, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/washington-freightliner-inc-v-shantytown-pier-inc-md-1998.