Court Opinion

ID: 9595542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:41:23.889217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:28.346608
License: Public Domain

COLER, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
*35I would affirm both the jury verdict and the directed verdict.
As I view the defendants’ answer and counterclaim they allege total failure of consideration, claiming the feed supplement was of “no value to Defendants.” They claimed less than total failure of consideration, however, in their prayer for relief for the “sum of $23,699.40 less a reasonable sum for the value, if any, of the * * * supplement.”
The trial court submitted to the jury as a part of damages for breach of warranty the defendants’ requested jury Instruction #9 as jury Instruction #16 reading as follows:
“16
“The measure of damages for breach of warranty is the loss directly and naturally resulting, in the ordinary course of events, from the breach of warranty. In the case of breach of warranty of quality, such loss, in the absence of special circumstances showing proximate damages of a greater amount, is the difference between the value of the feed supplement at the time of delivery to the buyers and the value it would have had if it had answered the warranty. However, where special circumstances are proven showing proximate damages of a greater amount, all damages which naturally may result from a breach of warranty, accrue in favor of the party injured by such breach of warranty if they are certain and determinate in nature or amount are also directly attributable to the breach of the warranty as their cause.” (emphasis supplied)
By this instruction, the defendants salvaged their claim for damages for lack of quality even if the trial court erred in denying the partial failure of consideration claim.
I submit that under the foregoing instruction, coupled with Instruction #17 set forth in the majority opinion, the issue of value of the feed supplement has already been submitted to the jury, under another heading than we might prefer, and resolved *36against the defendants. It became the law of the case and defendants are bound by the law they helped establish for the purposes of this case. SDCL 15-6-51(b).