Patten v. Pangoast

• Decision Date: 20 March 1888
• Parties: PATTEN et al. v. PANGOAST et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

109 N.Y. 625

15 N.E. 893

PATTEN et al.

v.PANGOAST et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

March 20, 1888.

Appeal from general term, superior court, city of New York.

Action by Jefferson Patten, Jr., and Samuel H. Lyman for non-delivery of iron pipe, pursuant to a contract of sale, against Richard Pancoast and Horace G. H. Tarr. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendants appeal.

Roger A. Pryor, for appellants.

Cephas Brainerd, for respondents.

GRAY, J.

It was error for the court to withhold from the jury upon the trial the question of whether the defendants, in their transactions with the plaintiffs, acted as agents for others, or on their own behalf as principals. The contract which the parties made for the purchase and delivery of the pipe was oral; and in such a case it is the province of the jury, where the evidence in respect of the terms of the contract and of the intent of the parties is conflicting, to decide what was their agreement. It is the province of the court to construe written contracts; but oral agreements and negotiations which are disputed by the parties are to be considered and determined by the jury. Applying these safe and well-settled rules of law to the present case, we find the defense set up in defendants' answer, that they acted as agents for the Reading Iron-Works, and not otherwise, not to be without some support in the evidence taken on the trial. The plaintiffs' evidence would, if taken by itself, perhaps prove that, in the negotiations for the sale of the pipe, defendants did not disclose any agency, nor intimate where the from was to come from, or that others were concerned in the transaction. These negotiations were conducted by one of the partners in each firm. But the fact appeared in plaintiffs' case that the name of the Reading Iron Company appeared over the defendants' office door, and their agency for that company was printed upon their bill-heads. While of themselves these facts might not be of sufficient weight to be submitted to the jury's consideration as proof of the alleged agency, yet when taken in connection with the testimony of Mr. Tarr, one of the defendants' firm, that he told one of the plaintiffs for whom the contract was to be made, and that he told Mr. Patten he would submit his (Patten's) specification for a certain quantity of pipe to the Reading Company, and would subsequently give him a price for it, and that he subsequently disclosed to Mr. Patten that he had seen Mr. Colt, of...