Holmes Manufacturing Co. v. Fraker
Holmes Manufacturing Co. v. Fraker
Opinion of the Court
The contract of employment sued on contained the provision: “The party of the first part [plaintiff] is to furnish a bond satisfactory to the party of the second part [defendant] to protect, such assets as are accessible to him.” One of the defenses set up by the defendant was that the plaintiff failed to furnish a bond as required by such provision. Special ground one of the amended motion for a new trial complains that the court, while charging the jury as to waiver of the above-quoted provision of the contract, erred in charging as follows: “Gentlemen, I charge you that the express terms of a contract may be waived in whole or in part by the parties to it, and that where there is a contractual stipulation imposed by one party to a contract but that party does something which would amount to a waiver thereof, it is optional with the other contracting party whether he should treat the contractual provisions as waived or hold the other party to his contract in that respect. In this connection I charge you that the plaintiff could have refused to enter upon the employment of the defendant until the bond matter had been arranged for agreeably, and I further charge you that the defendant could have refused to permit the plaintiff to enter upon his duties as an employee of the defendant under the contract until a satisfactory bond was furnished to the defendant.” We think that this charge was error. The last sentence authorized the jury to find that the mere fact that the defendant allowed the plaintiff to enter into employment without
The other grounds of the amended motion for a new trial will not be considered, as the matters out of which the alleged errors arose will not likely occur in the retrial of the case.
The court erred in overruling the amended motion for a new trial.
Judgment reversed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.