Hogan v. Globe Mutual Building & Loan Ass'n
Hogan v. Globe Mutual Building & Loan Ass'n
Opinion of the Court
In this action the demurrer of the above-named corporation defendant to plaintiffs’ amended complaint was sustained, and judgment of dismissal was thereupon entered in favor of said corporation. Plaintiffs appeal from said judgment, and the only question presented relates to the sufficiency of the complaint. The respondent contends simply that the complaint does not state a cause of action, and therefore the demurrer to it was properly sustained, and the action rightly dismissed.
The complaint is based upon an order for $386, drawn on the respondent corporation by defendant Esty in favor of appellants, and accepted by the corporation with an indorsement on its face, signed by the corporation, in the following language: “Accepted, payable as follows: $375 upon completion of house, $11 thirty-five days after, provided no liens are filed.” The order in question is dated and addressed to “Globe Mutual Loan Assn.,” and runs as follows: “Please pay to Humboldt Lumber Co., or order, three hundred and eighty-six dollars, for material furnished on your building, w. s. Grant st. and Bancroft, Berkeley, and charge same to my account.”
It is shown by the complaint that the defendant Esty was a contractor constructing the building referred to in the order for the owner of premises upon which it was located; that the building and loan association had in its hands, at the time of -said acceptance by it, moneys and securities belonging to the owner of the building, more than sufficient to pay said order; that soon after the order was drawn, and when the house was nearly completed, it burned down, without any fault on the part of plaintiffs or the contractor, and thereby it became impossible to complete it. It also appears from the complaint that the house, when destroyed, was insured against fire for its full value, in the name of the owner, and for the benefit of the building and loan association, mortgagees of said property, and that the contractor offered to rebuild the house at the original contract price, but the owner
The precise question to be determined here is this: Was the completion of the house a condition precedent to respondents’ liability on its acceptance? The intention of the party executing the acceptance should govern in answering this question, and this intention is to be determined by the language used in the acceptance, and this language should be construed by the light of the circumstances under which the language was used, having a due regard for the relation of the parties; and the courts will not import a condition into a contract, unless compelled to do so by the language employed. Looking, then, first, to the language, we find the first word used in the acceptance is “accepted”; the words which immediately follow relate to the time when the order is to be paid. The event of the completion of the house was evidently fixed upon merely as the time of payment. It is not reasonable to suppose that the parties intended that the payment should be contingent upon the house not being destroyed by fire, because they expressed nothing of that kind, and in all probability the thought of fire did not occur to them. We are further impelled to the conclusion that the acceptance was meant to be absolute and unconditional from the fact that the lumber company had parted with all title and right to the material furnished, and there was nothing left for the company to do to earn the money mentioned in the acceptance; and, further, the respondent was under the mortgage and insurance policy secured in the very property which the acceptance was to pay for against any possible loss by reason of paying the acceptance when it should fall due. The material sold was a part of the house upon which respondent held a mortgage, and respondent may be said to have succeeded to the title to these materials to the extent that his mortgage gave him an interest therein. The house is treated as the property of respondent, and is referred to as “your building” in
From the foregoing facts we conclude that the times and dates mentioned in the acceptance were intended merely to prescribe the time of payment by reference not to days or years, but to events that in all probability would happen. It having become impossible that these events should ever occur, it is but reasonable that the money should be due and payable whenever the fact of the impossibility of their occurrence has become certain. In other words, the money was due on the acceptance immediately on the destruction of the house by fire and the determination of the owner not to rebuild; provided, of course, the owner did not unreasonably delay the making of a decision on that question, in which case it would be due upon the lapse of a reasonable time after the fire within which to make such decision: Ubsdell & Pierson v. Cunningham, 22 Mo. 124. The parties having neglected to provide for the contingency of a fire, the law in this case, as in many other eases, supplies the omission by implying such a promise as is necessary to do justice between the parties. The foregoing propositions find support in the following cases: De Wolfe v. French, 51 Me. 420; Crooker v. Holmes, 65 Me. 195, 20 Am. Rep. 687; Nunez v. Dantel, 19 Wall. 560, 22 L. Ed. 161.
The case of Clark v. Collier, 100 Cal. 256, 34 Pac. 677, contains nothing out of harmony with the foregoing. In that
We advise that the judgment be reversed.
We concur: Haynes, C.; Smith, C.
PER CURIAM.—For the reasons given in the foregoing pinion the judgment is reversed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.