Hoy v. Gronoble

• Decision Date: 01 January 1859
• Parties: Hoy versus Gronoble.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 9

34 Pa. 9

Hoy versus Gronoble.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Centre county.

Linn, for the plaintiff in error, cited Stewart v. Walker, 2 Harris 293.

Hall, for the defendant in error, cited Sedgwick on Damages

209, 212; Alexander v. Herr's Executors, 1 Jones 537; Holler v. Weiner, 3 Harris 244.

The opinion of the court was delivered by STRONG, J.

The plaintiff below brought suit to recover damages for a breach of a parol contract, by which the defendant engaged to employ him to cultivate a farm upon shares. The only questions raised in this court relate to the proper measure of damages. The plaintiff having, through the alleged default of the defendant, failed in obtaining the employment, the learned judge of the Common Pleas instructed the jury, that his damages were to be measured by what he could have made on the farm, and that besides these, they might allow him damages for violation of faith. This instruction, it is contended, was erroneous.

There are few subjects more difficult than the proper rule by which damages are to be estimated. It is often said that in actions founded upon contracts, the rule is compensation. But this practically amounts to very little. What is compensation? In many contracts, the parties have themselves fixed the measure. In many others, the contract furnishes no standard, and it is impossible to prescribe any general rule, which shall in all cases give to a plaintiff a precise equivalent for what he would have enjoyed, if the contract had not been violated. Without attempting to deduce from adjudicated cases any rule of universal application, it may suffice, for the present, to refer to a few principles that seem to be supported by the better authorities. While it is well settled, that a jury are not at liberty to allow mere speculative damages, yet there are cases in which a plaintiff has been held entitled to what he would have made had the contract been fulfilled: I mean, to what he would have made immediately out of the contract.

The loss of such profits is not consequential, in the sense in which consequential damages are sometimes said to be too remote. They are in the immediate contemplation of the parties when the contract is made. Thus, in contracts for the sale and delivery of goods at a designated time or place, the damages are measured by the price of the goods on the day named, or at the place specified, if there be a failure on the part of the vendor. This is, in effect, making him responsible for profits. This subject has received a very thorough discussion in New York, in Masterton v. The Mayor of Brooklyn, 7 Hill 62. That was a case in which the plaintiffs had agreed to furnish marble for the City Hall of Brooklyn, for which the defendants agreed to pay as the work progressed. After a portion of the marble had been delivered, the defendants refused to receive any more, and the plaintiffs brought covenant for a breach of the contract. They were allowed to recover the profits they would have made from the actual performance of the contract. The court, while denying the right of the plaintiffs to remote and contingent damages, or to profits of collateral enterprises, in which they might have been induced to engage on the faith of the contract with the defendants, remarked that, "profits or advantages, which are the direct and immediate fruits...