Lacombe v. Martin

• Decision Date: 31 January 1946
• Citation: 319 Mass. 116,64 N.E.2d 622
• Parties: LACOMBE et al. v. MARTIN.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

319 Mass. 116

64 N.E.2d 622

LACOMBE et al.

v.MARTIN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

Jan. 31, 1946.

Action by Arthur Lacombe and another against Odilon Martin to recover a commission for producing a purchaser for defendant's real estate. The trial judge found for plaintiffs, but the Appellate Division ordered judgment for defendant and the plaintiffs appeal.

Order of Appellate Division affirmed.Appeal from Third District Court of Bristol; Potter, Judge.

Before FIELD, C. J., and LUMMUS, QUA, DOLAN, and WILKINS, JJ.

G. H. Young, of New Bedford, for plaintiffs.

P. Barnet, of New Bedford, for defendant.

QUA, Justice.

In this action to recover a commission for procuring a purchaser for the defendant's real estate in New Bedford the trial judge found for the plaintiffs, but the Appellate Division ordered judgment for the defendant. The plaintiffs appeal.

On the issue whether the plaintiffs produced a customer ready, willing, and able to buy on terms satisfactory to the defendantthe evidence in its aspect most favorable to the plaintiffs tended to show that the plaintiffs interested one Frechette in the property; that the defendant said he would lat the property go for $8,000; that one of the plaintiffs told the defendant's wife that ‘the Frechettes would pay $8,000’; that the defendant's wife arranged for the parties to meet at an attorney's office ‘to have an agreement drawn for the sale of the property and to make sure that they were to receive ‘$8,000 cash”; that thereafter there was further talk between the plaintiff and the defendant in which the defendant said he wanted it understood before he went to the attorney that he was to have $8,000 in cash, but one of the plaintiffs said that the defendant was ‘supposed’ to pay the commission; and that the plaintiffs refused to go to the attorney's office ‘under those conditions.’ So far as appears this was the end of the matter, and no agreement was drawn up.

The defendant's price of $8,000, whether a commission was to be paid out of it, as the plaintiffs insisted, or whether it was to be net to the defendant, as he seems to have insisted, in the absence of any other qualification upon it, was an offer to sell for cash down in full. Lawrence v. Rosenberg, 238 Mass. 138, 141, 130 N.E. 189. There was no evidence that Frechette ever in fact made to the defendant or to the plaintiffs an offer of $8,000 cash down, whatever one of the plaintiffs may have told the defendant's wife ‘the Frechettes would pay.’ There was no evidence that the defendant's wife was the defendant's agent to receive offers coming through the...