Case ID: ny-st-rep_54/html/0242-01.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

William Wilson, Jr., Resp’t, v. The Wyandance Springs Improvement Co., App’lt.
    
      (New York Common Pleas, General Term,
    
    
      Filed August 9, 1893.)
    
    1. Principal and agent—Proof of agency.
    To entitle a vendor to recover for goods sold through an alleged agent it is not indispensable that express authority to such agent to purchase on defendant’s credit should he shown; it is sufficient that there has been a course of dealing between the parties from which such authority could he inferred, such as purchases by the assumed agent of similar merchandise on defendant’s credit and payments therefor by the latter.
    3 Same.
    Denials of such agency by defendant’s president and the assumed agent; and their assertions that he was the agent of. a corporation of a similar name, having the same officers as defendant and occupying the same office, are not conclusive, because those of parties in interest.
    . Appeal from a judgment for plaintiff rendered by the district court in the city of New York for the eighth judicial district.
    Action to recover the agreed price for merchandise sold and delivered to defendant at the instance of its agent.
    
      Douglass Minton, for resp’t; H. H. Walker, for app’lt.
   Bischoff, J.

Attentive consideration of the evidence renders it irrefragably apparent that the only defense was an attempt to shift responsibility for plaintiff’s demand from a solvent to an insolvent corporation. Express authority to Rosenfeld to purchase merchandise upon defendant’s credit was not indispensable to plaintiff’s right to recover. It was sufficient that there had been a course of dealing between plaintiff and defendant from which Rosenfeld’s authority could be inferred. Lamb v. Hirschberg, 48 St. Rep., 658. Such a course of dealing appeared in evidence from the testimony of plaintiffs witnesses, which was to the effect that the assumed agent had on former occasions purchased merchandise of like kind on defendant’s credit, and that these purchases were in each instance ratified by defendant by acknowledgment of its indebtedness and payment thereof.

The evidence as to such course of dealing may be slight, if considered without reference to other facts which appear, but its effect is intensified when it is kept in mind that defendant and another corporation of nearly the same name had the same officers and occupied the same office, to which the bills for merchandise were directed to be sent, and that this office bore the sign only of the defendant.

The denials of defendant’s president and of Eosenfeld, the assumed agent, that the latter was the agent of the defendant, and the assertions that he was the agent of the Wyandance Mineral Water Company, were not conclusive, because they were those of persons in interest. See cases cited in Lamb v. Hirschberg, supra.

The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.

Gtegerich, J., concurs.