Court Opinion

ID: 3865038
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 08:58:43.693069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:31.247480
License: Public Domain

It is, in general, true, that death does not absolve a man from his contracts; but that they must be performed by his personal representatives, or their non-performance compensated, out of his estate. An exception to this rule, equally well established, at both the civil and common law, is, that in contracts in which performance depends upon the continued existence of a certain person or thing, a condition is implied, that the impossibility of performance arising from the perishing of the person or thing shall excuse the performance. The implication arises in spite of the unqualified character of the promissory words, because, from the nature of the contract, it is apparent that the parties contracted upon the basis of the continued existence of the particular person or chattel. The books afford many illustrations of this reasonable mode of construing contracts, de certo corpore, as the civil law designation of them is, in furtherance of the presumed and probable intent of the parties. The most obvious cases are, the death of a party to a contract of marriage before the time fixed by it for the marriage; the death of an author or artist before the time contracted for the finishing and delivery of the book, picture, statue, or other work of art; the death of a certain slave promised to be delivered, or of a horse promised to be redelivered, before the day set for delivery or redelivery; and the death of a master or apprentice before the expiration of the term of service limited in the indentures. The bodily disability from supervening illness, as of an artist, from blindness, to paint the picture contracted for, or of a scholar to receive the instruction his father had stipulated should be received and paid for, has been held, for the like reason, to excuse each from the performance of his contract. Hall v. Wright, 1 Ellis, Blackb. Ellis, 746; Stewart v. Loring, 5 Allen's Rep. 306. The cases in support of these and other illustrations of the exception to the general rule are set down in the defendants' brief, and it is unnecessary to repeat them. Both at the civil and the common law, it is necessary, that the party who would avail himself of this excuse for non-performance of the contract, should be without fault in the matter upon which he relies as an excuse. The latest and most instructive case, upon this subject, so far as the discussion of the principle of decision is concerned, is that of *Page 594 Taylor v. Caldwell, decided by the Queen's Bench, in May last, 8 Law Times Rep. 356. In that case it was held, that the parties were discharged from a contract to let a music hall for four specified days for a series of concerts, by the accidental destruction of the hall by fire before the first day arrived. The full and lucid exposition by Mr. Justice Blackburn, who delivered the opinion of the court, of the prior cases and of the principle upon which they had been decided, leaves nothing further to be desired upon this subject.
Does the case at bar fall within the general rule, or within the exception we have been considering? This must depend upon the nature of the contract, whether one requiring the continuing existence of the employer, Keach, for performance on his part, or one which could, according to its spirit and meaning, be performed by the defendants, his administrators. The contract was, to employ the plaintiff as clerk and agent of the intestate, in his business, in New York and Philadelphia; and it seems to us undoubted, that the continued existence of both parties to the contract for the whole stipulated term, was the basis upon which the contract proceeded, and if called to their attention at the time of contract, must have been contemplated as such by them. The death of the plaintiff within the three years would certainly have been a legal excuse from the further performance of his contract; since it was an employment of confidence and skill, the duties of which, in the spirit of the contract, could be fulfilled by him alone. If this be the law in application to a covenant for ordinary service, (Sheppard's Touchstone, 180,) how much more in application to a contract for service of such confidence and skill as that of a clerk and agent for sale. On the other hand, this employment could continue no longer than the business in which the employer was engaged, and the plaintiff retained. The intestate, when living, could, by the contract, have required the services of the plaintiff in no other business than that in which he had engaged him, and with no other person than himself. It would seem, then, necessarily to follow, that when the death of the employer put a stop to this business, and left no legal right over it in the administrators, except to close it up with the least loss to the estate of their decedent, they were by the contract, bound no *Page 595 
longer to employ the plaintiff, any more than he to serve them. The act of God had taken away the master and principal, — the law had revoked his agency, and stopped the business to which alone his contract bound him, — and if he would serve the administrators in winding up the estate, it must be under a new contract with them, and under renewed powers granted by them. Any other result than that this contract of service was upon the implied condition, that the employer, as well as the employed, was to continue to live during the stipulated term of employment, would involve us in the strange conclusion, that the administrators might go on with the business of their intestate, in which the plaintiff must continue with powers unrevoked by the death of his principal, or, that he, with new powers from them, was bound by the contract to serve them as new masters, and in a different service, and that they were bound to grant him such powers, and employ him for the stipulated time in such service. The novelty of such a claim, and the contradiction of well-settled principles necessary to maintain it, justify the ruling of the Judge who tried the cause; and this motion must be dismissed with costs, and judgment entered upon the verdict. *Page 596 

                           APPENDIX.
                           DECISION
OF A JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT, ON CASES LAID BEFORE HIM, BY
   VIRTUE OF A RESOLUTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, BY THE SCHOOL
   COMMISSIONER, UNDER THE SCHOOL LAWS.
                          PETITIONS.