Court Opinion

ID: 6415287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-06-25 11:55:42.712908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:51:31.568914
License: Public Domain

Wells, J.
The contract provides for the manufacture and disposal of six machines; and for a further continuance of the business under orders from the plaintiff, or by the voluntary undertaking of the defendants. The stipulations in regard to sales, division of the proceeds, the rights of the respective par *59ties and their relation to the business during its continuance, extend to the whole manufacture, whether of the first six machines or of any subsequently built. The difficulty arises out of the clause relating to the termination of the contract and providing what shall be the rights of the respective parties thereupon.
We are satisfied that this clause, providing for a termination of the contract by either party, relates wholly to the subsequent business continued under orders or otherwise, and does not affect the agreement for the first six machines. That could be rescinded only by the plaintiff, upon failure of the defendants to make payment for sales, under another clause.
Upon the report, we think we must take the fact to be established that the defendants made their letter of June 22 the formal notice of termination; and that their previous communications were merely intimations of their purpose to do so. Also that the personal interview after the plaintiff’s letter of May 18 rendered that letter equivalent to an order for twelve additional machines.
We are unable to give any force to the limitation of orders to the number of twelve machines, inasmuch as the provisions for termination limit the time for closing the business to the period of four months, and the defendants were under no obligation to construct more than two machines each month.
The defendants having given the notice to terminate the contract, the question is, What obligations did they thereby assume?
1. As to the six machines, their obligations are not changed. Those were absolutely provided for, and the defendants owe nothing on account of them until they are sold.
2. Of the twelve machines ordered, none were built and none were “ being built at the time the contract terminated.” The provision is, that “ for all machines ordered or built or being built” the defendants are to “ take the same and pay said Weed therefor $140 apiece.” This language seems to imply the then present existence of some specific article, capable of being taken and paid for. In the other alternative, which the plaintiff might elect to enforce upon such termination, the plaintiff was himself *60■to take the machines “ ordered or built or being built,” and the defendants were to “ deliver the same to said Weed, built in a complete and workmanlike manner and ready for immediate nse, within one month after the termination of the contract.” As the defendants were only bound to construct machines at the -,ate of two each month, this provision could not have been mderstood, nor intended, to apply to an entire order of twelve machines, without regard to the progress that might have been made in their construction at the time the provision should become operative.
Taking the whole clause together, we think that the provision to take and pay for machines must, in each instance, be understood to apply to machines then in actual existence. The terms “ ordered or built or being built ” serve to extend the provision to machines begun as well as those' completed within the time, and to machines undertaken by the defendants under the permission given in the contract, as well as those expressly ordered by the plaintiff. The bare order of the plaintiff, in no part executed by the defendants, cannot be construed as twelve machines to be taken and paid for by them; neither can it be treated as so many machines as the defendants might or ought to have constructed before the termination of the contract.
3. But the plaintiff is entitled to damages for the breach of the contract to construct the machines so ordered, at the rate of two in each month from the date of such order to the termination of the contract. Although the report states that there was no evidence as to the value of machines, nor that they could have been sold if manufactured ; yet, as the case does not seem to have been tried in view of the construction of the contract which we have adopted, it seems proper that the plaintiff should have the opportunity to prove his damages. The provisions in regard to termination give the plaintiff certain advantages, or would have done so if the defendants had complied with its requirements on their part, which may bear upon the question of damages for its breach by them; and the plaintiff is entitled to whatever benefit this may give him in considering the question of the damages. Exceptions sustained