Palmer v. Marquette & Pacific Rolling Mill Company

• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Cooley, J.:
• Citation: Palmer v. Marquette & Pacific Rolling Mill Company, 32 Mich. 274 (Mich. 1875)
• Decision Date: 18 June 1875
• Parties: J. Dwight Palmer v. The Marquette & Pacific Rolling Mill Company

32 Mich. 274

J. Dwight Palmer v. The Marquette & Pacific Rolling Mill Company

Supreme Court of Michigan

June 18, 1875

Heard June 10, 1875

Error to Marquette Circuit.

Judgment affirmed, with costs.

Parks & Hayden, Wilson H. Gray and Mitchel & Pratt, for plaintiff in error.

Daliba & Mapes and Ball & Black, for defendant in error were stopped by the court.

OPINION

Cooley J.:

The plaintiff sues the defendants for breach of a contract whereby as he alleges he was employed by them as dock superintendent at their works at Marquette. The contract is alleged to have been made August 8, 1872, for one year from August 14, 1872. Plaintiff entered upon the employment on the day last named, and was discharged January 1st, 1873.

To prove the contract, plaintiff gave in evidence certain oral negotiations between Mr. H. A. Burt, the agent of defendants, and himself, in which he proposed to enter the service of defendants at two thousand dollars a year, and Mr. Burt thought that sum was too high. This was about the the first day of August, 1872. On the seventh of the same month Mr. Burt sent him the following telegram:

"Chicago, August 7, 1872.To Dwight Palmer: You may come on at once at salary of two thousand, conditional only upon satisfactory discharge of business.

"(Signed) H. A. Burt, Agent."

It was this telegram, with the previous negotiations, that the plaintiff relied upon to make out the contract.

As he had counted upon a contract not to be performed within a year from the time it was made, it was incumbent on the plaintiff to show that the contract, or a memorandum thereof, was reduced to writing and signed by or on behalf of the defendants. And a memorandum, when the contract is not written out, must embrace all its substantial terms (except the consideration.--Comp. L. § 4702) and cannot be aided by parol evidence when essentially defective.-- Hall v. Soule, 11 Mich. 494; Abell v. Munson, 18 Mich. 306. It is impossible to say that the telegram contains all the essential terms of a contract. It fixes no time for the continuance of the employment, and it does not name the employment itself. The plaintiff insists that the use of the word "salary," in a sense evidently implying a year's compensation, indicates that it was to continue a year at least, but if the bargain was thought by defendants to be favorable to their interest, it must be as much open to them to show that a term of...