Court Opinion

ID: 9624119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:51:32.080018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:05:38.889297
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
MR. JUSTICE DAYIS:
On petition for rehearing. By petition for rehearing the defendants earnestly insist that this case should not go back for a new trial, because as that petition reads the “plaintiff’s demand was for $3,500.00 cash to which by his own testimony he was not entitled until at least the month of September or October, 1951. Thus his suit, filed in May, 1951, was clearly premature, and the cause of action which he testified to and which this Court’s decision invites him to substitute by amendment would have been equally premature.”
Here counsel overlook the realities of this record. Upon the  trial had Bennett’s complaint has already been amended in point of law to conform to his proof, because without objection the appellants’ counsel permitted him to testify to the details of the contract which he asserts. Shaw v. McNamara and Marlow, 85 Mont. 389, 394, 278 Pac. 836; Curtis v. Zurich General A. & L. Ins. Co., 108 Mont. 275, 282, 89 Pac. (2d) 1038; Harrington v. Deloraine Refining Co., 99 Mont. 78, 85, 43 Pac. (2d) 660. Accordingly before a new trial the complaint must be amended in fact, as it should have been amended at the close of the plaintiff’s case in chief upon the first trial. This, that the jury may have before them the issues actually tried.
*241Had there been timely objection to the admissibility of  Bennett’s testimony under the complaint as originally drawn, the case before us might command a different ruling. But we have no such objection in this record. A motion for nonsuit after evidence has been received without objection does not challenge the admissibility of that evidence, but rather the sufficiency of the case made by the evidence admitted. These motions in this case raise only the question whether there was a total failure of proof, a question which we have ruled against the defendants.
Moreover, the action here upon the contract which Bennett’s  testimony tends to spell out is not premature, and has nothing to do with the maturity of the note mentioned in that testimony. If that note were itself not to fall due for twenty years or until March 5, 1971, the ease would be the same; for the note was not given. The cause of action for breach of the contract to make the down payment and to give the note, if so the jury were to find, would still mature within a reasonable time after March 5, 1951; and this action would still lie.
At bar if there is a contract as Bennett says, that contract includes a promise by the defendants to pay $3,500 in cash and by a bankable note within a reasonable time after March 5, 1951. If the jury find for Bennett and specifically that the defendants did not pay in cash and by note as they had promised within a reasonable time after March 5, 1951, their verdict will be for Bennett. If on the contrary the jury does not believe that the defendants made the contract Bennett claims, or that if they did so contract, a reasonable time for performance had elapsed when this action was brought on May 12, 1951, their verdict will be for the defendants. There should be no difficulty stating these issues in the trial court’s instructions.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
MR. JUSTICES ANGSTMAN and ANDERSON, concur.
*242MR. CHIEF JUSTICE ADAIR and MR. JUSTICE BOTTOMLY (dissenting).
In our opinion a rehearing should be granted herein.