Seavey v. Shurick
| Decision Date | 26 April 1887 |
| Docket Number | 12,551 |
| Citation | 11 N.E. 597,110 Ind. 494 |
| Parties | Seavey v. Shurick |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Allen Superior Court.
The judgment is affirmed, with costs.
P. A Randall and W. J. Vesey, for appellant.
J Morris, J. M. Barrett and C. H. Aldrich, for appellee.
This was an action by Shurick against Seavey, to recover damages for the alleged failure of the latter to clear certain woodland in compliance with the terms of a written contract a copy of which is exhibited with the complaint.
By the terms of the contract, Shurick sold to Seavey all the timber, except walnut trees, standing on certain tracts of land. Seavey agreed to pay a stipulated price per thousand for saw-logs, and so much per cord for wood, all of which was to be cut and hauled off by the latter.
The controversy between the parties grew out of the following stipulation in the contract, viz.: "It is also agreed that twenty acres of the White land shall be cleared and hauled off by Seavey, by March 15th, 1881, and ten acres more by January 1st, 1882, and the balance by January 1st, 1883, and that the brush of whatever Seavey shall cut shall be piled as cut."
The plaintiff had judgment below for four hundred and forty dollars.
Whether the rulings and judgment of the court can be maintained, depends upon the construction to be given to the clause of the contract above set out. The court below proceeded from first to last upon the theory that the contract required the appellant to cut and remove from the White land all the timber, except the walnut trees, without regard to size, leaving only the stumps.
The appellant insists, that as the primary object of the contract was the purchase of the timber standing on several tracts of land, the stipulation in respect to clearing the White land only required him to take off the merchantable timber and wood, within the periods specified, and to pile the brush of such timber as he should cut, as the cutting progressed.
The contract is in writing, and is free from ambiguity or equivocal expressions. Seavey was to take all the timber except walnut, as it stood, and as a consideration he was to pay a stipulated price per thousand for merchantable saw-logs, and an agreed price for cord-wood, when cut and hauled. This much of the agreement applied to all the timber on all the land. The merchantable timber was all to be taken from the whole. In respect to the White land, the contract was peculiar, in that it required that a specified number of acres should be "cleared," and the logs and wood hauled off, within given dates, and the whole to be completed within a specified time. It also required that the brush on this land should be piled as the timber was cut. Simply to take the merchantable logs and wood from the White land,...
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