United Shoe MaChinery Co. v. Holt

• Decision Date: 25 February 1904
• Citation: 185 Mass. 97,69 N.E. 1056
• Parties: UNITED SHOE MACHINERY CO. v. HOLT et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

185 Mass. 97

69 N.E. 1056

UNITED SHOE MACHINERY CO. v. HOLT et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

February 25, 1904

COUNSEL

John E. Crowley and Walter A. Buie, for appellant.

Brandeis Dunbar & Nutter, Edwd. F. McClennen, and Walter Heilborn, for appellee.

OPINION

LORING J.

By the bill in this suit, when it was filed, the plaintiff sought to obtain possession of 26 lasting machines which had been leased to J. H. Winchell & Co., and sold outright by them to the defendant Holt for $300. By what is entitled an 'interlocutory decree,' but which apparently was made on a motion for a temporary injunction, it was found that the machines had been shipped out of the commonwealth, and the defendant was directed to file his answer before it was due. This was, in effect, an order that the bill be retained for the assessment of damages, which was the only relief which could be given. The case was sent to a master by an order which is not included in the record. From the master's report, it appeared that the 26 machines in question were made by the Boston Lasting Machine Company and leased to J. H. Winchell & Co. in 1891-93. The lessor sold its interest in all Boston lasting machines to the plaintiff in October, 1900, and the sale to the defendant Holt was in March, 1901. It appeared that at some time between 1893 and 1901 the plaintiff had come into control of the Hand Method lasting machine, and that the plaintiff found it to be for its interest to sell the Hand Method machine in preference to the Boston machine. As showing that there was a market for the Boston machine in Boston after the plaintiff had taken up the Hand Method machine, evidence was admitted 'that some manufacturers had refused to surrender their leased machines,' and 'there were also occasional orders for it from abroad.' It was also found by the master that 'these machines were sold by the Boston Lasting Company and the complainant as its successor in Boston, in quantity, for resale abroad, with the collateral agreement that they were to go out of the country, and that, if any should afterwards be returned to the United States, the title to such machines so returned should revest in the Boston Lasting Machine Company, or in the complainant, its successor.' The master also found that, 'under the above conditions, sales of the Boston lasting machines in quantity have been made within the last three years in Boston by the boston Lasting Machine Company, or by the complainant as its successor, at two hundred and fifty dollars a machine, and that said machines were subsequently resold abroad for five hundred dollars each; and this I find as a fact. The purchasers of these machines in quantity to be sent abroad were corporations distinct from, but controlled by, the Boston Lasting Machine Company, or the complainant as its successor. The sales of the machines to such corporations were outright sales, and the jobbing corporation received the profit on a resale of the machine abroad for five hundred dollars,' and that 'Boston lasting machines to be used in the United States were not sold, but were leased, for the life of the patents thereon, to boot and shoe manufacturers throughout the country, by a written lease.' Officers of the Boston Lasting Company and of the plaintiff company testified that 'the fair market value of a Boston lasting machine was five hundred dollars, or from five hundred to one thousand dollars,' and one of the partners of J. H. Winchell & Co. testified 'that the market value of the twenty-six machines was three hundred dollars'; but he also testified that 'he had never known of the sale of a Boston lasting machine, and his only knowledge of the market value of shoe machinery was derived from his purchase of various kinds of shoe machinery for his own use at different times.' The master found 'that in 1901 there was still some demand for the Boston lasting machine, principally from abroad, and that, when one was sold, it was still sold in the United States to go abroad, for two hundred and fifty dollars'; reported all the facts bearing upon the market value of Boston lasting machines in March, 1901; and ruled 'that the market value of a new Boston lasting machine in March, 1901, was the price at which it was sold in quantity in Boston to jobbers for resale abroad, to wit, two hundred and fifty dollars, and not the price for which it was sold by the jobbers abroad, to wit, five hundred dollars'; and, 'assuming this ruling to be correct,' he found 'that the market value of these twenty-six secondhand machines in March, 1901,' was $195 each.

1. The plaintiff has raised the question of the correctness of this ruling and finding by the third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth exceptions taken by him to the master's report. Where a defendant is liable for converting an article of personal property which has a market value in Massachusetts the measure of damages is to be ascertained by its market value here, and not by the value which it may be found to have here by deducting from its market value in a foreign market a sum which would fairly represent the expense and risk of sending it to foreign market. This was assumed to be the law in Glaspy v. Cabot, 135 Mass. 435. There may be cases in which the evidence warrants the ruling that the damages are to be measured by the market value in the domestic or in...