Friend & Terry Lumber Co. v. Miller (1885) · DecisionDepot

Friend & Terry Lumber Co. v. Miller

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Supreme Court Sep 24, 1885 No. No. 9775Published

Before: Searls

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Holding. The court held that damages resulting from a party's failure to receive payment from a third party due to a breach of contract are too remote to be recoverable, as they are not the proximate result of the breach and could not have been contemplated by the parties.

Issues

Whether a complaint is ambiguous for including interest as an incident to the principal debt.
Whether damages resulting from a third-party's failure to pay the defendant are recoverable as proximate damages for a breach of contract.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“The damages sought to be proven were not the proximate result of plaintiff's violation of its contract.”

“The failure of plaintiff to deliver the piles in time was a remote not a proximate cause of defendant’s failure to receive compensation on his contract.”

“It was damages which could not well have been contemplated by the parties when they entered into the contract.”

Synopsis

Pleading—Sefabatb Causes of Action—Ambiguity.—In an action to recover the price of goods sold and delivered, an allegation that a certain further sum is due as interest does not introduce a separate cause of action, or render the complaint ambiguous, unintelligible, or uncertain.

Bale —Failubb to Delivbb—Damages.—A loss resulting to the vendee in a contract of sale from a failure to realize upon a contract with a third person, which was known to the vendor at the time of the sale, held, too remote to be recovered as damages from the vendor for a delay in delivering the goods, although the delay was the cause of the vendee’s failure to realize upon his contract.

Searls, C. Action to recover $1,807.40 for lumber, building material, and piles, sold and delivered by plaintiff to defendant.

Plaintiff had a verdict for $1,087.90, upon which judgment was entered.

The appeal is taken from the judgment and from an order denying a motion for new trial.

Defendant interposed a demurrer to the complaint, which was overruled.

The demurrer was properly overruled. The pleading after averring the indebtedness of defendant in the sum of $1,578.97, on account of certain lumber, building material, etc., sold and delivered to defendant by plaintiff between October, 1880, and August, 1882, proceeds to aver that defendant is further indebted in the sum of $228.43, on account of interest to August 1,1882, due on said sum.

The interest was but an incident of the principal thing, the debt due to plaintiff.

It did not constitute and was not treated in the complaint as forming a separate cause of action. The simple statement in concise language that a given sum was due for interest up to a given date on the principal sum, did not render the complaint ambiguous, unintelligible, and uncertain in any respect.

At the trial, defendant introduced testimony tending to show that he contracted with plaintiff for certain piles and lumber to be used in pursuance of a contract with the drainage commissioners, which he had agreed to finish within a given time, all of [466]which was known to plaintiff, who agreed to furnish the same when required. Defendant then offered to prove that plaintiff failed to furnish the piles in time, whereby he was delayed in the completion of his contract and failed to realize the money therefor, which but for such delay he would have received from the State through the drainage commission.

The testimony was offered in various forms, but all tending to the same end, viz., to show that by the delay of plaintiff, defendant was prevented from completing his contract for so long a time that he did not receive his pay from the State, was compelled to borrow money to carry on the “work that the piles were to be used in,” etc.

It was objected to this evidence that it was irrelevant, immaterial, and incompetent; that the damages sought to be proven were too remote; that the act under which defendant was acting was invalid, etc.

Friend & Terry Lumber Co. v. Miller

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