Barlow v. Jones

• Decision Date: 09 July 1913
• Citation: 87 A. 649
• Parties: BARLOW v. JONES et al.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

87 A. 649

BARLOW

v. JONES et al.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

July 9, 1913.

Bill by John Barlow against Josiah Jones and others. Decree for complainant.

E. R. Walker and F. S. Katzenbach, both of Trenton, for complainant.

Charles E. Bird, of Trenton, for defendants.

REED, V. C. This bill is filed to enjoin the collection of a check deposited with a building commission appointed to erect a courthouse in Mercer county. The check accompanied a proposal by the complainant to build a courthouse. Both were delivered in conformity with the terms of an advertisement for proposals, which required that each bidder must present with his proposal a certified check payable to the Commissioners for $10,000, which check should be held by the commission as security that such bidder, in case the contract shall be awarded to him, will forthwith enter into such contract in writing and give the bond required by the specifications; and on failure to do so the amount of said check shall be forfeited as fixed and liquidated damages for the failure of such bidder to enter into such contract and give bond.

The complainant's bid was accepted; but he, upon discovering that his proposal was $28,769 less than he intended it should be, declined to execute the contract and give the bond and notified the commission of his mistake and asked that he be permitted to correct his bid, which the commission declined to do, and awarded the contract to the next lowest bidder and declared that complainant's check for $10,000 was forfeited. The real ground for equitable relief must be found in the theory that the contract which arose from acceptance of complainant's bid should be canceled upon the ground that it was a product of a relievable mistake.

The complainant is a contracting mason. In accordance with the specifications, he submitted proposals for the erection of the new courthouse in five different shapes, varying in accordance with the materials to be used in each of the five proposed methods of construction. Mr. Barlow proposed to do that part of the work falling within his trade as mason. To enable him to bid for the entire work, he solicited bids from subcontractors for the other portions of the work. His bids were to be in by 10 o'clock in the forenoon of August 14, 1901. On the morning of August 14th Mr. Barlow and his bookkeeper, Mr. Van Syckel, waited until the arrival of the morning mail to get the latest bid of any subcontractor who had not yet submitted his bid. Upon the arrival of this mail, they proceeded to add to the amount which Mr. Barlow had fixed for his own work the amounts bid by each lowest responsible subcontractor for his portion of the work. There seems to have been seven different parts of the work to be done by subcontract in each one of the five different plans upon which bids had been invited. One of the subcontractors was J. W. Lanning, whose bid was $28,769. The items to make up the amount of the complainant's bid, as they were written by Mr. Van Syckel, the bookkeeper of the complainant, on that morning, are in evidence. The items from which the amount of bid No. 1 was computed, as well as bid No. 2, appear on schedule one. The items from which the three other bids were made appear on schedules 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The bid of Mr. Lanning should have appeared as an item in each one of these five calculations. It appears only in the first two. It does not appear among the items which were the basis of the computation from which...