White v. Miller

• Decision Date: 23 September 1851
• Citation: 18 Pa. 52
• Parties: White <I>versus</I> Miller.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

18 Pa. 52

White versus Miller.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

September 23, 1851.

ERROR to the District Court of Allegheny county.

Flanegin, for plaintiffs in error; Williams and Kuhn, for defendants. See 16 Ser. & R. 56, Elliott v. Hills.

The opinion of the Court was delivered, September 23, 1851, by GIBSON, C. J.

As soon as owners of lots ceased to be their own builders, they put it in the power of the persons employed by them to occasion losses to mechanics and material-men which they ought not to bear; and it was to remedy this mischief that the legislature established the principle that materials and labour are to be considered as having been furnished on the credit of the building, and not of the contractor. The principle is not only a just but a convenient one. Whether the builder be the agent of the owner or an independent contractor, his appointment to the job creates a confidence in him which was not had before; and the consequences of a false confidence ought not to be borne by those who had no hand in occasioning it. Nor does the rule of the legislature bear hard on the owner. He has it in his power to detain the price of the building while there are outstanding charges against it, or to stipulate for security against those that might afterwards turn up; and if he use common prudence, any loss which occurs will eventually fall on the author of it. If he do not, he cannot charge the mechanic or material-man with the consequences of his own supineness. The adaptation of these lien laws was imperfect, and they worked ill for the owner at first; but, amended and expounded by experience, they work justly and well for all parties. If, then, the lumber was furnished on the credit of the building, and not of the contractor, it is not easy to understand how it could be seized and sold by his creditors. The title to it was vested, by the delivery, not in him, but in the proprietor of the building, subject only to the revendication of the seller. The ownership of it between the time of delivery and of working it into the building, could not be in the contractor, because it was delivered to him, not on his own credit, but on the credit of the building to which it was destined. It was sold for the building, and, consequently, to the owner of it. He had power to protect it from the contractor's creditors, and he cannot charge his inactivity to the material-man, who had nothing to do with it. The ownership had passed by the delivery, and the...