Held v. Beach-Robinson Co.

RICHARDS, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment in plaintiff’s favor and from an order denying the defendant’s motion for a new trial.

The facts of the ease are substantially these: The defendant in the month of September, 1913, had been awarded a contract to remodel Grace Cathedral Church, and in the month of November of that year sublet the portion of its contract

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having to do with inside cabinet work to the Bank Equipment Company for the sum of four thousand four hundred dollars. The plaintiff for some years prior to this time had been engaged in the business of doing artistic woodwork, but had disposed of his business to a successor, which in turn transferred it to the Bank Equipment Company. Plaintiff was friendly to this latter institution, and evidently desired that it should succeed in the fulfilment of this particular subcontract, but a little more than a month after work upon it had begun plaintiff learned from the president of the Bank Equipment Company that it was being hard pressed for money and in danger of attachment for a bill of $150. The plaintiff went to Mr. Beach, of the Beach-Robinson Company, and explained the situation, whereupon the latter stated that if the plaintiff would advance the money to the Bank Equipment Company to meet its immediate need, and if the said company would give the plaintiff an order for the amount, “he [meaning, of course, the defendant] would stay good for it.” The plaintiff took this course, and procured an order for $150, to be paid “out of the money due us under our contract with you. ’ ’ This order the Beach-Robinson Company accepted; and not long after, and under a similar state of facts, accepted another order of the Bank Equipment Company in plaintiff’s favor for the sum of $630, payable thirty-five days after the completion of the defendant’s contract with the Grace Cathedral corporation. Within a day or two after the signing of this second order the plaintiff, apparently desiring a more formal writing covering both advances to the Bank Equipment Company, secured from the defendant the following paper:

“San Francisco, 1914, January 19.

“Ernest Held, Esq.,

“Dear Sir: We promise to pay you $630 and $150, equal to $780, out of the Grace Cathedral fund as soon as we receive it from the Grace Cathedral Association, which we expect will be about February 26, 1914.