Case ID: nys_96/html/1030-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "BISCHOFF, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

STONE v. PLAUT et al.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term.
    December 21, 1905.)
    Principal and Agent—Commissions of Agent.
    Where an agent was engaged to procure a loan of not less than $220,-000, but failed to secure anything better than an offer of $210,000, and, this not being accepted, he abandoned the matter, he was not entitled to commissions when his principal subsequently took a loan of $200,000 from the same party.
    [Ed. Note.—For cases in point, see vol. 8, Cent. Dig. Brokers, §§ 74, 86, 89, 94.]
    Appeal from City Court of New York, Trial Term.
    Action by Samuel H. Stone against Albert Plant and others. From a judgment dismissing the complaint, plaintiff appeals.
    Affirmed.
    Argued before SCOTT, P. J., and BISCHOFF and MacEEAN, Jj.
    Henry Brill, for appellant.
    Frederick W. Hinrichs, for respondents.
   BISCHOFF, J.

In our opinion the plaintiff was properly nonsuited, and the judgment should be affirmed. Engaged to procure-a loan of not less than $225,000 or $220,000, the plaintiff’s efforts failed to secure anything better than a tentative offer of $210,000; and, this not being-accepted, he admittedly abandoned his interest in the matter, as appears from his own letter. Thereafter the defendants took the loan at $200,-000 from the party with whom the plaintiff had negotiated, but this gave him no cause of action for commissions. He had been employed to obtain a loan at or above a minimum limit, which he failed to do, and the defendants, acting upon his written disclaimer of further employment, proceeded to obtain a substantially smaller loan themselves. Here is no reasonable suggestion of bad faith, and a verdict for the plaintiff would have been quite without support in the evidence. That upon the facts presented the broker has no claim to commissions is a proposition well settled by authority. Donovan v. Weed, 182 N. Y. 43, 74 N. E. 563 ; Sibbald v. Bethlehem Iron Works, 83 N. Y. 378, 38 Am. Rep 441.

Judgment affirmed, with costs. All concur.