Crail v. Illinois Cent. R. Co.
| Decision Date | 10 May 1926 |
| Docket Number | No. 7146.,7146. |
| Citation | 13 F.2d 459 |
| Parties | CRAIL v. ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Stanley B. Houck, of Minneapolis, Minn., for plaintiff in error.
Edwin C. Brown, of Minneapolis, Minn. (Brown & Guesmer and Charles A. Loughin, all of Minneapolis, Minn., and W. S. Horton, of Chicago, Ill., on the brief), for defendant in error.
Before SANBORN and LEWIS, Circuit Judges, and PHILLIPS, District Judge.
The plaintiff was a wholesale and retail dealer in fuel in Minneapolis, Minn., where he had a coal yard for the delivery of coal to him in that city. The defendant was a common carrier. A carload containing 88,700 pounds of coal was delivered to it, the initial carrier, at Royalton, Ill., for transportation under a uniform bill of lading to Minneapolis, Minn. During its transportation the plaintiff bought the bill of lading and became the owner of the coal. The defendant caused it to be delivered at its destination in the plaintiff's yard in Minneapolis, less 5,500 pounds, which the defendant or one or more of its connecting carriers had lost out of it in transit. The plaintiff sued the defendant for the fair market value of this 5,500 pounds at $9.70 per ton, which was the retail market value of such coal in such a quantity at Minneapolis at that time. The defendant insisted that it was liable for only $5.75 per ton, which was the wholesale market value of such coal at Minneapolis at that time in lots of 60,000 to 120,000 pounds.
The case was tried by the court without a jury on a stipulation of the facts by the parties, and it held that the defendant was liable to pay to the plaintiff for this 5,500 pounds of coal at the rate of only $5.75 per ton, the wholesale market value at Minneapolis of carload lots of such coal in quantities of 60,000 to 120,000 pounds. The writ of error challenges this ruling.
The parties stipulated, in addition to the existence of the wholesale and retail market values and the other facts which have been recited, that, disregarding the freight charges on the 5,500 pounds at the time of the delivery of the carload, less the 5,500 pounds, the reasonable average market value at Minneapolis delivered to the purchaser at his place of business or home of the kind of coal contained in the shipment in lots of 5,500 pounds, was $9.70 per ton, and that such coal in such quantities as 5,500 pounds could not be purchased in Minneapolis at the time the shipment arrived for less than $9.70 per ton in that market, that the plaintiff had not sold or contracted to sell the coal in the shipment, that he did not actually buy coal for the special purpose of replacing the 5,500 pounds lost, that he had coal on hand of the same class sufficient to meet the demands of his business, and that he bought coal in carload lots before and after the shipment, paid the freight and handled the shipment himself, at the rate of $5.50 per ton f. o. b. Royalton, Ill. The court rendered judgment against the defendant for only $5.75 per ton, the market value at Minneapolis of coal in carload lots of from 60,000 to 120,000 pounds.
Counsel for the plaintiff insists that the measure of damages for the breach of a contract to sell and deliver or to carry and deliver at a certain time and place coal or other like personal property is the market value of the quantity of the commodity the contractor failed to deliver at the time and place of its agreed delivery, that it is the amount the contractee could have sold the lacking quantity for, and that he would have been compelled to pay for that quantity in the open market at the time and place of delivery in order to make himself whole. This contention does not seem unjust or unreasonable. The time and place of delivery and the market value then and there it is conceded is the ordinary measure of damages. If at that time and place the defendant had taken this 5,500 pounds of coal out of the carload and sold it at its retail market value at the time and place of delivery, it would have received $9.70 per ton for it, not including freight, and in that case it seems reasonable that the plaintiff should have recovered from it that amount. The defendant through its fault, or the fault of others for which it is liable, took by its loss thereof this 5,500 pounds of coal from the carload, and thereby deprived the plaintiff of the $9.70 per ton which he could and probably would have sold it for.
The suggestion of counsel for the defendant that the plaintiff had bought and could have bought a carload of 60,000 to 120,000 pounds of coal for $5.50 per ton and freight and could have taken 5,500 pounds of that purchase to replace the coal the defendant lost is in our opinion neither relevant nor persuasive. No duty rested upon the plaintiff to purchase a carload of coal in order to restore the loss of the 5,500 pounds which the defendant's negligence inflicted upon him. Another contention of defendant is that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover the retail market value, because that retail market value includes overhead, storage, cartage, handling expenses of unloading and delivery, and a retailer's profit. But there is no evidence or stipulation regarding the amounts of these items, no proof that they would have been incurred in making a retail sale of 5,500 pounds, nothing to show that this could not have been made without expense in the yard where the coal was to be delivered, and there is a stipulation that the plaintiff could not have purchased 5,500 pounds and no more in the retail market in Minneapolis at that time for less than $9.70 per ton.
It was to avoid the consideration of just such items and matters as these that the common-law rule that the market value of the property at the time and place of agreed delivery under contracts of sale and transportation or at the time and place of conversion should be the measure of the compensation required to make the injured party whole. In Brown...
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