Case ID: misc_94/html/0238-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Lehman, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Jacob H. Semel and Max Liebhold, Copartners, Trading as J. H. Semel & Co., Respondents, v. Olga Braun, Appellant.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term, First Department,
    March, 1916.)
    Guaranty — when, a continuing one — contracts — goods sold and delivered.
    Where defendant in consideration of one dollar, the receipt of which was duly acknowledged, agreed in writing to be responsible and guarantee to plaintiff a certain sum for all goods sold prior to the date’of the writing and all goods sold and delivered on running account to a certain other person, the guaranty is a continuing one and applies to goods sold .and delivered after its date.
    Appeal from a judgment of the Municipal Court, borough of Manhattan, first district, entered in favor of the plaintiffs, after a trial without a jury.
    Arthur Furber, for appellant.
    Leonard Bronner (Simon S. Hamburger, of counsel), for respondents.
   Lehman, J.

On September 23, 1912, the defendant signed the following guaranty: ‘ ‘ For and in consideration of One Dollar, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, I hold myself responsible and guarantee to Messrs. J. H. Semel & Co., of 514 and 516 Broadway, New York, the sum of Three Hundred and Fifty Dollars for all goods that have been sold prior to the date of this guarantee and all goods sold and delivered on running account to Samuel Braun of 704 Columbus Avenue, New York.” At the trial the defendant claimed that since the words in this guaranty were in the past tense the guaranty should be confined to those goods which had been “ sold ” but not delivered and to goods which had been “ sold and delivered ’ ’ prior to the date of the guaranty. The trial justice overruled this contention and gave judgment for the plaintiff for the value of goods sold and delivered to Samuel Braun after the signing of the guaranty.

It seems to me that the decision of the trial justice is correct and should be affirmed. There are two elements in this guaranty which show an intention on the part of the defendant that it should apply to “ goods sold and delivered ” after the date of the guaranty. In the first place the guaranty provides that it shall cover “ all goods that have been sold prior to the date of this guarantee ” and then proceeds with the words: “ and all goods sold and delivered on running account.” If the parties had intended that these' words should also be limited to a time prior to the date of this guarantee ” it is difficult to understand why the parties should have specifically placed this limitation only on the first clause of the guaranty. In the second place while the word account ” has no definite technical meaning and is capable of a flexible use (see Goldstein v. Leibowitz, decided herewith), yet when that word is coupled with the word ‘ ‘ running ’ ’ I think it connotes an account whiph is not closed but is a continuing account. Certainly it is quite open to this construction.

It follows that the judgment should be affirmed, with twenty-five dollars costs.

Weeks and Delehanty, JJ., concur.

Judgment affirmed, with costs.