Court Opinion

ID: 9768599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 06:09:38.315533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:42.208502
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
PER CURIAM:
In the motion for rehearing appellant says we ignored the case upon which appellant placed major reliance, Bench v. *251Egan’s Estate (Mo.Sup.) 363 S.W.2d 547. The case is distinguishable. What it held was that the probate claims there filed on account of breach of contract, containing no allegation or statement of facts as to the manner in which the contract was breached, were wholly insufficient. In the Bench case the defendant legal representatives stood on their motion to dismiss on the ground that the claim failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. That was not the case here. Here plaintiff started out with a statement which alleged, with a minimum of words, that there was due him from the estate a definite sum on account of labor and materials furnished. This we have held, although subject to a motion to make more definite and certain, was not a nullity. Ten days after the claim was filed defendant aided the claim by filing a counterclaim which furnished sufficient details so far as the contract aspect of the matter was concerned and which made it plain that so far as the hull burner was concerned the executrix knew the breach of which plaintiff was complaining was failure to make payment of the contract price. The court was not presented with any such situation in the Bench case.
Although appellant says in her motion for rehearing the contract on the hull burner was pleaded in her counterclaim on the assumption that plaintiff’s claim was in quantum meruit and for the purpose of limiting the claim to $5800.00, the contract price, this would not lessen the aider aspect of appellant’s pleading, referred to above. We note, too, that no such limited purpose in pleading the contract was mentioned at the trial or in appellant’s brief. The proof at the trial was that both sides were in agreement there was an oral contract to construct the hull burner for $5800.00. The defense was that whether the claim for construction of the hull burner was in contract or quantum meruit, the hull burner did not perform as warranted and had no value to defendant’s decedent, and for that reason the estate owed plaintiff nothing on it.
The counterclaim also cleared the air in some other respects. Plaintiff’s claim was for $9124.80. According to the counterclaim, $5800.00 of this was the contract price on the allegedly defective hull burner (the trial court added $67.80 for sales tax, thus arriving at the amount awarded, $5867.80). The counterclaim disposed of an additional $1334.20 of plaintiff’s claim, by referring to a payment of $367.80, with a balance owed of $966.40 for piping and duct work, as to which there was no dispute. This left $1922.80 and defendant knew from the claim this was for work and labor. In the absence of attack by defendant as to lack of definiteness this was enough to permit evidence (of which there was sufficient) to support a quantum meruit recovery on the mote burner.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.