Court Opinion

ID: 6411636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-06-25 11:53:08.342197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:51:23.652196
License: Public Domain

Bigelow, J.
The facts proved at the trial did not show that there was any sum due to the plaintiff as a final balance after a settlement of all the business of the firm and the payment of all its debts. The evidence only tended to prove that the property of the partnership, which passed into the hands of the defendant, was sufficient to pay the debts due from the firm at the time of its dissolution ; but it did not appear that there was any surplus left in the hands of the defendant, nor that his own claims on the assets of the firm had been paid or satisfied, nor that this was the only claim outstanding. Such proof was essential to enable the plaintiff to recover in an action at law against his copartner as upon a final settlement of the affairs of the copartnership. Sikes v. Work, 6 Gray, 433, & cases cited.
But the main reliance of the plaintiff at the trial seems to have been on his second count, in which he claims to recover the amount of a debt due from the firm, which he alleges that he was compelled to pay in violation of the agreement between himself and the defendant, made at the time of the dissolution *408of the firm. The difficulty in maintaining the action on. this count is, that it sets out no breach of the contract annexed to the declaration. The amended count seems to have been framed upon an entire misconception of the legal effect of the contract. It alleges that the defendant agreed to pay all the outstanding debts of the firm, and avers as a breach that the defendant neglected and refused to pay the note annexed to the declaration, and that the plaintiff was compelled to pay the same with costs. But the written contract contains no such agreement. The defendant did not undertake to pay all the debts of the firm. He only agreed to apply the partnership property and assets, which were placed in his hands, towards the payment of the outstanding debts of the firm, according to the best of his judgment. Beyond this he assumed no responsibility and incurred no liability to his copartner. There was therefore a fatal variance between the contract set out in the declaration and the written agreement offered in evidence. There was no averment that the defendant agreed to apply the partnership property in his hands towards the payment of the debts of the firm according to the best of his judgment, and no allegation of any breach of this stipulation. The evidence offered at the trial, that the property and assets of the firm in the hands of the defendant were sufficient, if properly applied, to pay all the debts of the firm, and that the defendant refused to apply them to that purpose, but appropriated them to his own use, did not sustain or correspond with any allegation contained in the declaration. The evidence would have been competent in support of a count properly framed on the contract, but had no tendency to prove the agreement as set out in the plaintiff's amended count.
Under the denial, contained in the answer, of each and every allegation in the amended declaration, except the execution of the written contract, the plaintiff was bound to prove the averments in his declaration; and it was competent for the defendant to object, not only that the written contract did not support the agreement as set out in the declaration, but that the evidence offered to prove a breach of the contract was inadmissible, because it had no tendency to show such a breach as the plaintiff had averred in his amended count

Exceptions overruled.