Winslow v. Dakota Lumber Company
| Decision Date | 28 June 1884 |
| Citation | 20 N.W. 145,32 Minn. 237 |
| Parties | Jeremiah C. Winslow and another v. Dakota Lumber Company |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal by defendant from an order of the district court for Clay county, Stearns, J., presiding, refusing a new trial.
The order denying a new trial is affirmed.
Wilson & Ball and Alfred Wallin, for appellant.
Briggs & Elders, for respondents.
This is an action for the price of goods alleged to have been delivered to Joseph Thompson, upon defendant's agreement to pay for the same. Thompson had taken a contract to haul logs for defendant, and the goods were supplies furnished him "in and about" the performance of his contract.
The point principally argued and elaborated here is that the verdict in favor of plaintiffs is not justified by the evidence. This was so strenuously contended for by defendant's counsel that we have examined the settled case with unusual pains; and while, in accordance with our usual practice in such cases, we shall refrain from any detailed analysis or presentation of the testimony in this opinion, we are all entirely satisfied that the record discloses competent evidence reasonably tending to support the verdict, and sufficient to prevent us from disturbing the action of the jury. As is often the case in hardly-contested litigation, the testimony is irreconcilably inconsistent in many material particulars. Much of it is circumstantial where it might well have been expected to have been direct and the general impression which it leaves upon our minds is that on both sides the business involved in this action was very loosely conducted. But we are of opinion, nevertheless, that there is evidence in the case fairly tending to show that the goods were furnished to Thompson by plaintiffs, upon an understanding between them and defendant that the latter should pay for them. We use the term "understanding" as expressing a valid contract engagement, but one of a somewhat informal character.
This is all that we desire to say as to the claim that the verdict is not sustained by the evidence, except to add that, as respects the notice to plaintiffs not to sell or deliver any goods to any one on defendant's account without a written order, we think there was evidence from which it was open to the jury to infer that the notice was treated by the parties as having no reference to the supplies to be furnished Thompson, and, upon this theory, the court properly proceeded in its charge to the jury.
Error is further assigned in the admission of evidence over defendant's exception. It is very likely that this case might have been tried with greater economy of time and testimony; but when the informal character of the contract between the parties, as it is testified to by plaintiffs' witnesses, is considered, it is clear that much more latitude was permissible, for the purpose of showing historically and otherwise the relations of the contracting parties, and the circumstances in which they acted, than if the contract had been entered into with the formality with which business of the kind ordinarily is, and always ought to be, transacted. In other words, the case was one in which it was indispensable for the plaintiffs to adduce evidence which would put the jury, as far as might be, in the position in which the parties stood at the time when the contract alleged was made, so that what was done and said could be considered in the light in which the parties considered it. While, in attempting to do this, more or less testimony of little or no significance or importance appears to have crept in, we are of opinion that the testimony (here objected to) of the facts and circumstances which led to the making of the alleged contract, showing how the parties came together, to...
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