Case ID: me_123/html/0550-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

T. F. Cassidy & Son vs. Rogers and Webb and Morison Brothers, Trustees.
    Penobscot County.
    Decided June 12, 1923.
    This case as it was tried and comes to us upon motion after verdict, presents a pure question of fact.
    The testimony is flatly contradictory. The defendant Webb and one witness confuted, absolutely, the testimony of the plaintiffs and their two witnesses.
    We are of the opinion, however, that the plaintiffs sustained the burden of the proof.
    The controversy was over an alleged oral agreement on the part of the defendants to become responsible, as original promisors, for certain material which had been furnished and to be furnished to the Boston & Penobscot Ship Building Co. for the completion of a ship in which the defendants had become large owners on the date of the alleged promise, July 29, 1919.
    Later the plaintiffs took a trade acceptance of the Ship Building Co. for the amount of their bill, $1,646.15, which was renewed once or twice, and then protested for nonpayment. After this had happened the plaintiffs wrote the defendants in regard to the protest, stating the amount of their bill to be $1,646.15. We think the defendants’ letter in reply to the plaintiffs’ communication, stating the amount of then bill, contains a clause that may be regarded as a recognition of the plaintiffs’ bill, as distinguished from the other bills. The letter says, “For your information we beg to advise that we gave the Shipbuilding Company a check covering your bill the day after the vessel was launched.” We are of the opinion that the phrase “covering your bill” construed in connection with the plaintiffs’ testimony that the defendants agreed to pay it, could have been fairly interpreted by the jury as corroborative of the plaintiffs’ contention. However this may be, the jury, if they believed the plaintiffs and their witnesses, had sufficient other evidence upon which to base their verdict.
    Motion overruled.
    
      Fellows & Fellows, for plaintiffs. Donald F. Snow and Albert T. Gould, for defendants.