Court Opinion

ID: 9639301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:11:35.285903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:15.401218
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I agree with Judge SIBLEY that the judgment of the court below was wrong; with Judge FOSTER that there should be an end to this litigation. I do not, however, agree with Judge FOSTER, that it should be ended by an affirmance for plaintiff.
Giving every fact in the record every effect in favor of plaintiff possible to it, it seems plain to me that no obligation of any kind has ever sprung in its favor against the defendant, and I think that, but for the fact that the cause was tried below to a jury (Slocum v. New York Life Ins. Co., 228 U. S. 364, 33 S. Ct. 523, 57 L. Ed. 879) judgment should be here rendered for defendant.
Whether, if the facts developed on the retrial had sustained the factual assumptions of the majority opinion on the former appeal, I should have felt hound to accept that opinion as the law of this case, I do not find it necessary to decide, though I find myself in agreement with Judge Walker’s dissent, that the facts upon which the majority rested its conclusion that defendant had assumed a liability to plaintiff do not support that conclusion.
The record here does not present the state of facts assumed and given» the most importance in the former opinion, that there was a secret lease, “kept secret for the purpose of compelling appellant to pay more than the market price for phosphates.” It directly and by the' uncontradicted proof rebuts that assumption, and leaves this court not only at liberty, but bound to determine on this appeal the legal effect of the undisputed facts which this record discloses.
These facts make it entirely dear to me that it never was the purpose of the defendant to assume Phosphates’ contract, but quite the contrary, that it took no action having that effect, and that a verdict finding that way on this record would be without a shred of evidence to support it.
If a cause of action could arise out of the act of the defendant in arranging for the cancellation of the low price contracts with Armour & Co. and others, for the purpose and with the effect of removing the conditions which gave plaintiff the right to rebates, plaintiff should of course have had an instructed verdict, for there is no question hut that the defendant did just that thing.
If that action alone could not furnish the spring of liability, and it is perfectly clear to me that it could not, then defendant should have had an instruction, for that was all that the defendant did. To find in the face of the deliberately adopted and carefully carried out purpose of defendant not to assume or become liable for plaintiff’s contract with Phosphate that it did do so, would be to permit a theory that it ought to have done so to supply the place of evidence that it did.
I concur in the judgment of reversal, but, believing with Judge FOSTER that this litigation over an undisputed state of facts ought to end, I think that, instead of a general reversal, the reversal ought to be with directions to instruct a verdict for defendant, if upon a retrial the same facts appear.