Stock v. Towle
| Decision Date | 04 April 1903 |
| Citation | 97 Me. 408,54 A. 918 |
| Parties | STOCK et al. v. TOWLE et al. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
(Official.)
Report from Supreme Judicial Court, Androscoggin County.
Action by Frederick W. Stock and others against Josiah C. Towle and others. Case reported. Judgment for defendants.
Action to recover $40, claimed to be due the plaintiffs for loss of 20 cents per barrel on 200 barrels of flour alleged to have been sold to the defendants, and the acceptance of which was refused by them. Plea, general issue.
Argued before WISWELL, C. J., and EMERY, WHITEHOUSE, STROUT, SAVAGE, and SPEAR, JJ.
Geo. C. Wing, for plaintiffs.
W. H. Newell and W. B. Skelton, for defendants.
This is an action to recover damages sustained by the plaintiffs by reason of the refusal of the defendants to accept a car load of flour alleged to have been bargained and sold to them by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs were proprietors of flouring mills at Hillsboro, Mich., with a branch office for the wholesale of flour at Lewiston, Me., and the defendants were wholesale dealers in flour and grain at Bangor, Me. The case comes to this court on report.
At the time of the alleged contract the price of old wheat flour was well advanced, but new wheat flour was coming into the market, and the price was likely to fall. The defendants informed the plaintiffs by telephone that they desired to purchase a car load of old wheat flour for immediate use, but the conversation by telephone failed to result in the mutual assent of the parties to the same proposition. In the afternoon of the same day, however, the plaintiffs, from their office in Lewiston, sent the following telegram to the defendants at Bangor:
This telegram was received by the defendants the same day, and at 6 minutes past 5 o'clock the same afternoon the defendants telegraphed to the plaintiffs the following answer:
The introduction of the term "transit car" in this answer, being a material modification of the terms of the offer, operated in law as a rejection of it, and constituted a new proposal, which, however, was equally ineffectual to complete the contract until it was assented to by the plaintiffs. But the next day—July 30th—the plaintiffs sent the following letter to the defendants:
This constituted an acceptance of the defendants' proposal. It warranted the conclusion that the plaintiffs had "booked" the defendants a "transit car," as specified in the proposal. It is in evidence, and not in controversy, that the phrase "transit car" had a well-defined and uniform meaning in the trade, well understood by both parties. In this instance it meant a car already loaded, and on its way from Hillsboro to Maine.
No further communication took place between the parties until August 11th, when the following letter was sent from the defendants to the plaintiffs, namely:
To this the plaintiffs made the following reply:
To this letter the defendants replied as follows:
It appears from the evidence that on July 29th and 30th the plaintiffs did not have a car load of best patent flour in transit from their mills at Hillsboro to Portland, and that a car load of this quality of flour did not leave the plaintiffs' mills at Hillsboro, Mich., until August 2d, and did not arrive in Portland until after August 12th. It...
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Burn & Crump v. Metropolitan Lumber Co.
... ... order, reached an erroneous result. The result conforms to a ... similar result reached in Stock v. Towle, 97 Me ... 408, 54 A. 918, although in this latter case the point was ... identification of goods ordered and not place of delivery, ... ...
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Univ. of Me. v. Pratt
...assent to the qualification. He could have treated the letter as a rejection of his offer. Jenness v. Iron Co., 53 Me. 20; Stock v. Towle, 97 Me. 408, 54 Atl. 918; Furbish v. Chapman, US Me. 449, 108 Atl. But, treating the letter as a qualified acceptance, he assented to the qualification, ......