Wenger v. Barnhart

55 Pa. 300, 1867 Pa. LEXIS 186
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 3, 1867
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 55 Pa. 300 (Wenger v. Barnhart) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wenger v. Barnhart, 55 Pa. 300, 1867 Pa. LEXIS 186 (Pa. 1867).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered, July 3d 1867, by

Agnew, J.

— We think that the effect of the charge was to mislead the jury on the vital point of the case. Taken singly, perhaps no part of the charge can be said to be clearly erroneous. The judge very correctly stated that it was a question of delivery by Wenger at New Berlin, and that after delivery there, he had no right of stoppage in transitu. But the real question before the jury was, what constituted a delivery and whether it was complete ? Upon this point the charge, as a whole, must have led the jury to believe that the verbal order sent by Wenger to Wolf to load up a car with sixty-five barrels of his flour, along with Brown’s twenty-five barrels of Burkholder’s brand, and the fact of rolling out Wenger’s flour to the car and proceeding to load it up, was a complete delivery. But this was a very inadequate instruction upon the facts, which were rather peculiar, and tended to lead away the attention of the jury from those things which militated against the completeness of the delivery.

This was an action of trover and conversion, in which the plaintiffs were bound to show a title fully vested not simply by their own order for the flour to Brown, and payment in advance to him, but by a full and complete vesting of title in Brown through his purchase from Wenger. Their transaction with Brown was before he had even spoken to Wenger to sell him the flour. On the question whether the title to the flour had ever fully vested in Brown, the evidence shows that no part of the price had been paid to Wenger, the price being left open, depending on the Philadelphia prices. Brown himself admits and testifies, as the plaintiffs’ own witness, that the only understanding between him and Wenger was, that Wenger should put in the flour at New Berlin, and forward it to Barnhart & Koch, at Reading, in Brown’s name. He stated twice in chief and once in cross-examination that Wenger was to send the flour to Reading. He [304]*304admits that he was not at New Berlin to receive and forward the flour. In fact, he saw nothing more of Wenger until the time Wenger came and told him he had countermanded the sending of the flour, in which he acquiesced. He does not allege, nor was there any proof that Wolf, the agent keeping the forwarding warehouse at New Berlin, where Wenger’s flour was lying, was authorized by him to accept and receive delivery for him. So far as Wolf had anything to do in the matter he was acting under Wenger’s orders, and not as the agent of Barnhart & Koch.

Eli Wolf, the son of the warehouseman, testifies that the order delivered by Wenger’s teamster was to load sixty-five barrels of Wenger’s flour for Isaac Brown, to be delivered at Reading to Barnhart & Koch, and this is substantially the testimony, of Moses Butcher, the person by whom the order was. sent. When he brought the word young Wolf made the entry in the manifest book, but this was done not as a record of the delivery, but as a memorandum of the order, for the flour had not then been separated or rolled out upon the platform ; and the entry was crossed out by him as soon as he discovered .that it was prematurely made. There was contradiction in the testimony as to whether the flour was fully loaded into the car when Wenger came and countermanded the order to freight it — probably the weight of the evidence is that it was not. But be this as it may, it is very clear that the car was yet standing upon the siding, was still unlocked, and had not been fully delivered' into the custody of the railroad company for transportation. Neither Brown himself nor the plaintiffs, or any one for them, was present to receive the flour, and the whole matter was as ’yet in the hands of Wenger himself, who had undertaken with Brown to send the flour. To say, under such circumstances, that there was a full, final and perfect delivery to Brown to the use of Barnhart & Koch, as against the owner who had never received payment, and who up to this point had the business wholly in his own hands, and this in favor of an insolvent purchaser, is to hold the law of delivery too stringently. The jury ought to have been instructed that the delivery was not final and complete until the flour had actually passed wholly out of the power of Wenger into the possession of the railroad company for transportation to Reading. This was the express understanding between Brown and Wenger, and the case is to be measured by their understanding, and not by the previous arrangement between the plaintiffs and Brown.

In a contract so incomplete as this was, left so wholly to the seller to be carried out, and without any agent to accept delivery, except as he was implied to be the carrier by whom the flour was to be forwarded; the evidence of a full and complete delivery to the carrier should be distinct and clear to divest one man of his property, without payment of the price, in favor of one whose [305]*305insolvency is not discovered until the very moment of fulfilment. The charge left the jury to understand that much less would suffice to pass the title, and in view of this general effect, was erroneous.

Judgment reversed, and a venire facias de novo awarded.

This ease was again tried in the court below, on the evidence given on the former trial, together with evidence of declarations by Wolf, one of the defendants, that Brown had come to the station from Pleading, and said he had got $1100 from Koch, and that he went to Wenger and bought flour, and ordered it to be sent to Wolf’s warehouse ; also that Wolf said that just when the last barrel had been put in Wenger came and said it must be unloaded; also, evidence by Brown, that he said to Wolf, at the time above referred to, that he had twenty-five barrels of flour, and that he wanted to make up a load to go to Barnhart & Koch ; that Wolf'said he would receive the flour and attend to it.

The court (Hayes, A. J.) charged the jury:—

* * * “ Wenger sold the flour in question to Isaac Brown, and received nothing for it; and Barnhart & Koch gave Brown $1100 to buy this flour, and did not obtain a pound of it. In point of equity and justice, as suitors, they occupy a position of equality before the court to test the right in law to the property in dispute.

“ The Supreme Court have had the case under consideration, and in relation to it have given their opinion, which has been presented and read on this trial. The court and the jury have been admonished, with much emphasis, that neither the court nor the jury can disregard that opinion without a violation of their oaths. Unquestionably the decisions of the Supreme Court are of binding authority in this court — it is our duty to accept their interpretation of the law. What they decide and rule as law we hold to be the law; and if we err, this court and not the jury are responsible. The jury must look to the presiding court for instruction as to the law, and are neither required nor authorized to go behind or beyond this court to ascertain what the law is. After reading the opinion of the Supreme Court, reviewing the former trial, we experienced some difficulty in determining how to charge the jury here. Our first thought was to repeat the former charge, omitting or altering those portions which might be found obnoxious to the criticism of the court of review, and adding such remarks as the additional evidence adduced on this trial should demand.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
55 Pa. 300, 1867 Pa. LEXIS 186, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wenger-v-barnhart-pa-1867.