Cascade Boom Co. v. McNeeley Logging Co.
Cascade Boom Co. v. McNeeley Logging Co.
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiff is a corporation, organized to build booms and to catch logs and timber products therein, under the act of March 17, 1890, and has filed in the
The case turns entirely upon questions of fact. The conversation between the president of the appellant corporation and the manager of the respondent corporation, in relation to the use of the boom, was rather indefinite, and there was a conflict in the testimony as to the language-used. The witness Scott, president of the- plaintiff corporation, testified in relation to this conversation as follows:
“Mr. Wilcox says, Frank,’ he says, ‘how about that boom ?’ I says, ‘Do you want it hung ?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘yes.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘go and hang it.’ I says, ‘I am pretty busy; you have got lots of time; you go and hang it if you want it.’ He says, ‘All right,’ hei would. About ten days, I think, after that, he hung it.”
“I met Mr. Scott in Snoqualmie, and I asked him what he Was going to do with his boom that year. He said he was not going to do anything with it. I asked him what he would charge me to let me swing the boom and catch our logs, and ho hesitated, and lie says, ‘I won’t charge you anything;’ he says, ‘If you want to swing it, gu ahead and swing it.’ He says, ‘You can’t hurt those boom sticks.’ That was his very words. And I told him all right, I would take him up on it And so it might have been a week or ten days, or such a matter, and I had the boom strung.”
The latter witness was corroborated, in a measure, by the witness McNatt. This testimony utterly fails to show that the appellant caught and held the logs of the respondent at its request, as alleged in the complaint and lien notice, or as required by the statute. The utmost it tends to show is that the respondent took charge of and used the appellant’s boom, and thus rendered itself liable for the reasonable rental value thereof. The appellant claimed in argument that it should be allowed a recovery for such rental value at least. There are several objections to such a recovery in this action. There is no basis for such recovery in the complaint There is no testimony from which this court could determine such rental value, and no lien would attach to the logs to secure, its payment. We do not desire to be understood as holding that there was in fact any liability for the rental value in this case, as that question is not properly before us.
The appellant questions the authority of its president to grant the use of its boom free of charge; but, assuming that the president had no such authority, it would not avail the appellant in this case. If the president had no authority to act for or bind the appellant, then there was no request, and no agreement, express or implied, and we
In any event, the judgment appealed from is right, and the same is affirmed.
Mount, C. J., Hadley, Fullerton, and Dunbar, JJ., concur.
Root and Crow, JJ., took no part.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.