Hayes v. Cooley

• Decision Date: 14 June 1904
• Citation: Hayes v. Cooley, 13 N.D. 204, 100 N.W. 250 (N.D. 1904)
• Court: North Dakota Supreme Court

100 N.W. 250

13 N.D. 204

W. E. HAYES v. MARTHA T. COOLEY AND A. W. COOLEY

Supreme Court of North Dakota

June 14, 1904

Appeal from District Court, Steele county; Pollock, J.

Action by W. E. Hayes against Martha T. Cooley and A. W. Cooley. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendants appeal.

Affirmed.

Morrill & Engerud and E. J. McMahon, for appellant.

If by the thresher's delay crops are exposed to storms, the fault is his and he must pay for them. Our statute on the rule of damages was intended to adopt the rule recognized by the great weight of modern authorities. Our statute is adopted from Field's Code, New York, which has excluded a clause therefrom, to wit: "Which the party in fault had notice at the time of entering into the contract or at any time before the breach, and while it was in his power to perform the contract upon his part." This is considered to be a proper restriction upon the measure of damages, and such limitation is recognized and adopted in several English cases. See Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Exch. 341; also American cases, Gee v. Ry. Co. 6 H. & N. 211.

Our statute was intended to adopt the rule recognized by the great weight of authority. Hauser v. Pearse, 13 Kan 104; Hammer v. Schoenfelder, 47 Wis. 455, 2 N.W 1129; Holt Mfg. Co. v. Thornton, 68 P. 708; Schoemaker v. Acker, 48 P. 62; Goodloe v Rogers, 61 Am. Dec. 205; Baldwin v. Blanchard, 15 Minn. 489; Hobbs v. Davis, 30 Ga. 423; Passenger v. Thornton, 34 N.Y. 634; McAfee v Crofford, 13 How. 447, 14 L.Ed. 217.

Asa J. Styles and F. W. Ames, for respondent.

The rule limiting the recovery of damages to the natural and proximate consequences of the act complained of is universally admitted. Dubuque v. Dubuque, 30 Ia. 176.

There is no difference in the case where a piece of farm machinery is to be furnished for use in securing a crop, from where one is hired to thresh a crop; or where a servant leaves his master's service when harvest is on. Loss of crop is too remote as an item of damages. Fuller v. Curtis, 100 Ind. 237, 50 Am. Rep. 786, 5 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, (1st Ed.) 14; Reich v. Bolch, 27 N.W. 507; Sycamore Marsh Harvesting Co. v. Sturm, 13 N.W. 202; McEwen v. McKinnon, 42 Am. Rep. 458, 11 N.W. 838, 8 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, (2d Ed.) 583; Brayton v. Chase, 3 Wis. 456.

Loss of crop is too remote to be an element of damages. Prosser v. Jones, 41 Ia. 674; Fuller v. Curtis, 50 Am. Rep. 786.

OPINION

YOUNG, C. J.

The plaintiff seeks to foreclose a thresher's lien for threshing certain grain, consisting of wheat, oats, and barley, which was grown by the defendants in the season of 1902. The answer raises no issue as to the quantity of grain threshed by the plaintiff or as to the amount of his lien, but sets up a counterclaim for damages for detriment alleged to have been sustained by reason of plaintiff's breach of his contract to thresh defendant's flax crop. The trial court found that "the plaintiff agreed to thresh the defendant's crop of flax, consisting of two hundred acres, at eighteen cents per bushel, said flax threshing to be done after the plaintiff had finished threshing for one Hedington; that plaintiff wholly failed to perform this contract; that the defendants used due diligence to get said flax threshed by others in the fall of 1902, and did procure one hundred acres of same to be threshed in the fall of 1902 at a cost to the defendants of $ 351.54 more than the price at which the plaintiff had agreed to thresh the same, the balance of the flax not being threshed during the said fall; that on said one hundred acres of flax so threshed in the fall of 1902 there was one bushel per acre wasted by reason of delay in threshing." The court also found that 400 bushels of flax was lost on the other hundred acres, which was not threshed during that fall, and that the value of flax was 70 cents per bushel. As conclusions of law, the court held: (1) That the defendants were entitled to recover, as damages for the breach of the contract, the sum they had to pay for threshing their flax in excess of the amount for which the plaintiff had agreed to thresh it, to wit, $ 351.54; (2) that the defendants were not entitled to recover for the 500 bushels of flax which was lost during the delay in threshing. The defendants have appealed from the judgment, and assign error upon the last named conclusion.

But one question is presented on this appeal, and that is whether the defendants are entitled, as matter of law, to recover the value of the 500 bushels of flax. The defendants contend that the trial court erred in rejecting this item of damage, and that the judgment should therefore be modified in this respect. The rule for measuring damages which are recoverable for a breach of contract, although variously stated, may be said to be compensation for all detriment proximately and naturally caused by the breach. Our Code (Rev. Codes 1899) section 4978, states the rule as follows: "For the breach of an obligation arising from contract the measure of damages, except when otherwise expressly provided by this Code, is the amount which will compensate the party aggrieved for all the detriment proximately caused thereby, or which in the ordinary courses of things would be likely to result therefrom. No damages can be recovered for a breach of contract which are not clearly ascertainable in both their nature and origin." It is not claimed that this statute either restricts or enlarges the common-law rule which has been recognized and applied in hundreds of cases in England and in this country. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the codifiers attempted to embody in this section the rule of damages laid down in the leading cases of Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Ex. 341, 23 L. J. Ex. 179, 17 Jur. 358, 26 E. L. & E. 398, and Griffin v. Colver, 16 N.Y. 489, 69 Am. Dec. 718, and the series of decisions following the rules therein formulated. See 1 Sedgwick on Damages, sections 144-159, and 1 Sutherland on damages, section 50. In Hadley v. Baxendale the court said: "Where two parties have made a contract which one of them has broken, the damages which the other party ought to receive in respect of such breach of contract should be such as may fairly and reasonably be considered either arising naturally, i. e. according to the usual course of things, from such breach of contract itself, or such as may reasonably be supposed to have been in the contemplation of both parties at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it." In Griffin v. Colver it was said that: "The damages must be such as may fairly be supposed to have entered into the contemplation of the parties when they made the contract--that is, must be such as might naturally be expected to follow its violation; and they must be certain, both in their nature and in respect to the cause from which they proceed. The familiar rules on the subject are all subordinate to these. For instance, that the damages must flow directly and naturally from the breach of contract is a mere mode of expressing the first; and that they must not be remote, but proximate, consequence of such breach, and must be not speculative or contingent, are different modifications of the last." For other cases in which the rule is discussed see Sedgwick on Damages, supra. It is apparent, we think, that damages which are described as the "natural consequences of a breach" do not differ from those "which in the ordinary course of things would be likely to result therefrom," and that the rule authorizes compensation for all detriment which follows as a natural and proximate consequence of the breach, and prohibits a recovery for damages which are not natural and proximate consequences. In this, as in every case of this character, the difficulty lies, not in the rule, but in its application. The question is whether the destruction of the flax, which the trial court found was lost and destroyed after the plaintiff's breach of contract, and before the crop was finally threshed, was the natural and proximate consequence of the plaintiff's failure to do the threshing at the time agreed upon. If it was, the defendants are entitled to recover therefor. If it was not, their loss is not within the rule of damages, and they cannot recover. The findings of fact do not state what the immediate and moving cause of the loss was. Neither is the condition of the flax shown--that is, whether it was loose upon the ground, in shock, or in stack. The argument of appellant's counsel assumes that the loss occurred as a result of exposure to storms. However that may be, it is certain that it was from a cause for which the plaintiff was not responsible under his contract. In other words, it was directly from a cause over which he had no control, which operated after the time when he should have completed the threshing. The most that can be said is that if he had performed his contract the flax would not have been exposed to the storms which destroyed it.

Upon the facts of this case we are compelled to hold, both upon principle and authority, that the defendants cannot recover the damages in question. The fundamental error in their contention lies in the assumption that where a thresher has by failure to...