Robins v. Mack Int'l Motor Truck Corp.

• Decision Date: 02 February 1931
• Docket Number: No. 88.,88.
• Citation: 153 A. 649
• Parties: ROBINS et al. v. MACK INTERNATIONAL MOTOR TRUCK CORPORATION.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

153 A. 649

ROBINS et al.

v. MACK INTERNATIONAL MOTOR TRUCK CORPORATION.

No. 88.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Feb. 2, 1931.

Syllabus by the Court.

A tender is not good if accompanied by and dependent on any condition to which the other party has lawful reason to object.

Syllabus by the Court.

A judgment entered upon a nonsuit directed by the trial judge and brought up for review will be affirmed, if correct, on any legal ground, although the reason ad- vanced by the court below may be erroneous.

Appeal from Supreme Court.

Suit by Edmond B. Robins and others against the Mack International Motor Truck Corporation. The court granted a nonsuit, and, from the judgment, plaintiffs appeal.

Affirmed.

C. Richard Allen, of Camden, for appellants.

Lewis Starr, of Camden, for respondent.

PARKER, J.

The appeal challenges the propriety of a nonsuit ordered by the trial judge in an action by the conditional vendees of several motor trucks against the conditional vendors, for damages as for a conversion.

The facts developed at the trial were complicated, but those necessary to a determination of the question before us are comparatively simple. The only valid grounds of appeal are the first, that the court erred in granting a nonsuit, and the last, that the court erred in not submitting the questions involved to the jury, which amounts to the same thing.

There were two conditional sale contracts by the defendants as vendors: One with plaintiff Frank McGuigan as vendee, made under the Pennsylvania statute, which is identical with ours; and one with plaintiffs Robins and Brogan as partners, under the New Jersey statute. P. L. 1919, p. 461, and supplements. At the time of the events giving rise to this suit, the three plaintiffs had apparently combined their interests, in some manner not material to the controversy. The installment payments stipulated in the written contracts were not kept up, and the defendant seized the trucks, as it was entitled to do, and served notice that they would be sold at a stated time and place unless redeemed. Negotiations ensued, which need not be recounted here, but which took time, and, before plaintiffs had secured financial backers and perfected arrangements for redemption, a judgment creditor of some or all of them had levied on the trucks in the state of Pennsylvania, and plaintiffs were unable or unwilling to lift the execution. The defendant, as conditional vendor, thereupon claimed property in the trucks levied on, and under the Pennsylvania law instituted an interpleader proceeding, as it is called. This seems to correspond rather closely to our claim of property under the Executions Act, 2 C. S. 1910, p. 2255, except that under the Pennsylvania law the claimant must give bond, and this the defendant did.

In this posture of affairs, the plaintiffs and their backers, named Bechtel and McManus, with whom plaintiffs had apparently made some arrangement to pledge their interest in the trucks as security for moneys to be advanced, went...