Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. v. Tacony Iron Co.
Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co. v. Tacony Iron Co.
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
This action was brought to recover $702, with interest, upon a contract dated April 16, 1907, by which the plaintiff agreed to furnish and deliver to the defendant 500 tons of Grey-Forge Sloss pig iron, under terms and conditions set forth at length in a copy attached to the plaintiff’s statement. Thirty-nine of the tons called for were delivered to a railroad company at Birmingham, Alabama, where the iron was made, to be shipped to the defendants at Tacony, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On April 30, 1907, the shipments were forwarded, and were tendered by the Pennsylvania R. R. Company to the defendant at Tacony, Pennsylvania, on December 24, 1907, when the iron was refused, and it was subsequently sold by the Pennsylvania R. R. Company for freight and charges which were in excess of the amount received from the sale of the iron. The contract specified that the iron was to be “Grey-Forge Sloss, at $22.80 per ton, of 2,240 pounds, delivered f. o. b. Tacony, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Shipments during April and May.”
No explanation was given as to where the iron had been held or why it had been detained during the intervening eight months, and the court on motion granted a non-suit which it subsequently refused to lift.
The agreement to deliver f. o. b. at Tacony, did not mean anything less than that the goods were to be de
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company v. Tacony Iron Company
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- 2 cases
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- Syllabus
- Contract — Sale—Delivery—Delay—Judicial notice. Where a contract for the sale of pig iron made in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 16 provided for “shipments during April and May,” “delivered f. o. b. Tacony, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” and the iron was shipped on April 30, but not tendered at Tacony until December 24, the purchaser is justified in refusing to accept the iron in the absence of any explanation as to the cause of the delay. In such a case the court will take judicial notice of the distance between Birmingham and Tacony and of the time, which by any ordinary means of transportation, would be consumed in sending goods from one point to the other, and will determine as a matter of law that the unexplained delay was wholly unreasonable.