Case ID: nys_124/html/1009-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "SUTHERLAND, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

GENESEE VALLEY MILK PRODUCTS CO. v. J. H. JONES CORPORATION.
    (Supreme Court, Trial Term, Monroe County.
    October 11, 1910.)
    Food (S 26*)—Legality of Object—Contracts Prohibited by Statute.
    The seller cannot recover the price of condensed milk, consisting of a mixture of pure and skimmed milk, sold in violation of Agricultural Law (Consol. Laws, c. 1) § 37, forbidding the sale of such milk; a contract prohibited by statute being unenforceable.
    [Ed. Note.—For other cases, see Food, Cent. Dig. § 19; Dec. Dig. § 26.*]
    Action by the Genesee Valley Milk Products Company against the J. H. Jones Corporation. Judgment for defendant.
    Geo. A. Carnahan and H. C. Nobles, for plaintiff.
    Paul M. Pelletreau, for defendant.
   SUTHERLAND, J.

The defendant ordered, and the plaintiff sold and delivered to it within the state of New York, quantities of condensed milk made of a mixture of pure milk and milk that had been skimmed; the proportion being either one to one or one to two. But the manufacture or sale of condensed milk made from milk from which the cream has been wholly or -in part removed is positively forbidden by section 37 of the agricultural law (Consol. Laws, c. 1), and the plaintiff must fail in this action brought to recover the purchase price.

The defendant was not deceived. It obtained just what it ordered, and has turned about and sold this very product to its own customers. The statute is absolute in terms, however, and the court has no alternative but to refuse to enforce a contract which the law prohibits. Page on Contracts, § 519.

Judgment is accordingly ordered for the defendant.