Ames Body Corp. v. Ralph
Ames Body Corp. v. Ralph
Opinion of the Court
Opinion of the Court by
Reversing.
Appellee and plaintiff below, R. A. Ralph, brought .this ordinary action in the Ohio circuit court against defendant and appellant below, Ames Body Corporation, which as its name indicates is a corporation, to recover
The jury .returned a verdict under the instructions given by the court in favor of plaintiff for the sum of $550.00, plus the item of $14.85, and defendant’s motion for a new trial having been overruled it prosecutes this appeal.
Numerous errors are assigned as cause fur reversal and elaborate briefs have been filed'by respective counsel, but we do not consider any of the assigned errors of sufficient materiality to merit discussion except those to which reference will be made.
It is conceded in briefs, and practically so in defend-, ant’s answer, that there was such a contract of the general nature of the one relied on, but whether it was for the
The right of plaintiff to recover the contract price is also eliminated from the case because he never manufactured the balance of the timber after defendant repudiated the contract into the articles purchased by it, but on the contrary manufactured that timber into cross-ties, an entirely different article, and therefolre the title to the purchased article to be manufactured in the future never passed to defendant and is therefore not involved. The only matter which was or could be litigated is the amount of damages, conceding the contract and its violation, which plaintiff is entitled to recover from being prevented from manufacturing the remainder of his timber into the character of lumber sold to defendant. The question is further narrowed by the subsequent conduct of plaintiff in converting his timbeir into erossties and disposing of them, for if he had continued to manufacture the lumber claimed to have been sold by him and had consumed all of his timber, then the question as to his right to recover the contract price, and perhaps other rights which he might have, would be presented. Since, however, that course was not pursued, we are confined to the single inquiry of the true criterion for measuring plaintiff’s damages growing out of defendant’s repudiation of the executory contract and depriving plaintiff of fulfilling it.
The rule in such cases seems to be that the seller may recover the difference, if any, between the contract price and the fair market value of the article at the time it was to be delivered under the contract if such time was specified, oír if not at such a time as it could, under the
Of course, if the article to be manufactured is> such that it has no market value, the above rule would not apply, but in that case the seller could dispose of the article at the best price obtainable and recover the difference between what was received under that sale and the contract price, and both methods of measuring the damages under the respective states of circumstances are set forth in the text of 24 R. C. L. 86-7, and upheld in the Coyle opinion. The article purchased in this case, as we have seen, was not manufactured by plaintiff and there was no sale of it in such manufactured state made by him; neither was there any evidence to show that the character of lumber purchased did not have a marketable value in that vicinity. On the contrary, we know from general observation that the dimensions specified do ' have a market value, and it is our conclusion that the rule laid' down in the Coyle case, supra, for the ascertainment of plaintiff’s damages in not being permitted to manufacture the remainder of his timber should have been followed, and the evidence as well as the instructions of the court should have been directed to that end.
Both the evidence upon the measure of damages as well as the instructions thereon having been objected to by defendant and its objections overruled, to which it reserved exceptions, and both of which were erroneous
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.