Nat'l Oil Ref. & Mfg. Co. v. Producers Ref. Co.

HENSHAW, J.

Plaintiff and defendant entered into a contract, by the terms of which the latter agreed to supply the former with all of the crude oil required to keep the former’s refinery running to its full capacity from January 29 to December 31, 1907. The full capacity was understood to be the capacity of this refinery on January 29th. The defendant was to sell this oil at a stipulated price, and in turn was to purchase from the plaintiff the products of the refinery, these products- being the distillates and the asphaltum residuum. This action was brought laying damages for defendant’s breach of this contract. Plaintiff alleged that the capacity of its refinery was 8927.18 barrels of distillate and 812.29 tons of asphaltum per month; that it had not been furnished sufficient crude oil to keep the refinery running continuously to its capacity; whereby plaintiff was obliged to close down repeatedly, to its great damage. It was further alleged that the plaintiff could not procure oil in the open market to supply the deficiency. On the trial the quantity of oil that was actually delivered to the plaintiff by the defendant was agreed upon by stipulation to be 58,224.28 barrels. A basic question upon the trial was, obviously, the capacity of plaintiff’s refinery at the time when the contract became effective. If defendant did not furnish oil to that capacity in accordance with its contract, and its failure so to do was not occasioned by causes which the contract itself provided should relieve the defendant from liability, such as fires, strikes, and accidents, then defendant had violated its contract, and the remaining question in the case was the measure and amount of damages.

Plaintiff offered evidence upon the capacity of its refinery. The court found that capacity to be twelve thousand barrels of crude oil per month, or eighty thousand barrels for the period from May to November, this being the period during

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which plaintiff charged that defendant had breached the contract by failure to supply oil in sufficient quantities. Twelve thousand barrels a month was well within the capacity shown by plaintiff’s evidence.

Appellant does not argue that it did not violate the contract, but, urges as serious error certain rulings of the court touching the admission of evidence, and also it insists that the court adopted an inaccurate measure of damages.