Case ID: ohio-cc_4/html/0397-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Cox, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

(First Circuit — Hamilton Co., O., Circuit Court —
    November Term, 1889.)
    Before Judges Swing, Cox and Smith.
    M. K. Turner v. John McDonald.
    
      Contract — Offer made and actually acted on, and work done under it without expressly notifying other party of acceptance, who however accepts the work done — Compensation for work performed — Value of wages and expenses, but not amount actually paid, is measure of damages for breach of such contract.
    
    Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County.
    
      Kramer & Kramer and Lowry JacJcson, for plaintiff in error.
    
      W. H. Jones, contra.
    
   Cox, J.

Plaintiff in error was the Cincinnati agent, and defendant in error the Chicago agent, of a mercantile reporting company. Defendant in error, having signified that he could do some of plaintiff in error’s “ writing up ” for him, plaintiff in error forwarded him a proposition to the effect that he would pay him a dollar a page for such work for a period of ten months. To this letter the defendant in error did not reply. He did the work, however, as it was sent, and, when plaintiff in error ceased to forward work to him before the ten months had expired, he sued for loss sustained thereby, and in the trial below recovered a verdict of $250. The defense was that there was no contract. The trial judge charged the jury that “ If you find McDonald was justified in relying on his construction of the letter, under the rules I have given you, then he is entitled to damages in the amount he has' paid for wages and expenses.”

Held: The giving of this charge was error; the charge should have been not what he paid for wages and expenses, but what were they worth, as' was also the refusal to give special charges 3, 4 and,5, asked for by the defendant below. These charges related particularly to the law governing contracts.

Judgment reversed.