Case ID: ad_102/html/0375-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Willard Bartlett, J.:", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Samuel R. MacDonald, an Infant, by Charles H. MacDonald, his Guardian ad Litem, Respondent, v. Winchester Repeating Arms Company, Appellant.
    
      Action in tort for a breach of warranty of goods.
    
    An action upon the case in tort will lie for the breach of a warranty of merchandise.
    Appeal by the defendant, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, from an order of the Supreme Court, made at the Westchester Special Term and entered in the office of the clerk of the county of Westchester on the 9th day of January, 1905, denying the defendant’s motion for an order requiring plaintiff to make the complaint more definite and certain.
    
      C. N. Bovee, for the appellant.
    
      George W. Elkins [James M. Hunt with him on the brief], for the respondent.
   Willard Bartlett, J.:

The avowed purpose of this motion is to compel the plaintiff to state whether the cause of action set out in the complaint is a cause of action upon contract or a cause of action in tort. We think that this is an action upon the case in tort for a breach of a warranty of goods, and that the court below was right in denying the motion, inasmuch as all the allegations of the complaint are appropriate to the statement of a cause of action in a suit of this character. (See Shippen v. Bowen, 122 U. S. 575.) In the case cited it is said to be now well settled, both in English and American jurisprudence, that either case or assumpsit will lie for a false warranty.

The application, so far as it sought a bill of particulars before issue, was also properly denied, the rights of the defendant being adequately protected by the leave which was granted in the order appealed from to renew this part of the motion after the joinder of issue.

The order should be affirmed.

Woodward, Jenks, Rich and Miller, JJ., concurred..

Order affirmed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements.