146 F. 688 | 9th Cir. | 1906
after making the foregoing statement of the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
On the hearing of the appellees’ motion in the court below, conflicting affidavits were presented on behalf of the respective parties, that on behalf of the appellees’ tending to show, among other things, that in the negotiations leading up to the making of the stipulation, the appellant represented to the appellees’ counsel that it had made little or no profits by the sale of the brushes in question, and that the appellant was so poor that a judgment against it for damages, profits, and costs would be worthless, and that the appellees’ stipulation to waive damages, profits, and costs was made in reliance upon the truth of those representations.
“Title defendant corporation will furnish to the complainants a true list of the names and addresses of all the manufacturers of the brushes heretofore bought by it, and of all its customers for brushes heretofore sold by it.”
Obviously there is nothing in this language requiring the appellant to furnish the appellees with .the names of the manufacturers who stamped the. brushes. Assuming that it was the intention of the parties that the . stipulation should have so provided, and that the appellees’ counsel, who, it appears, drafted the stipulation, omitted such a provision by mistake or through inadvertence, it affords no justification to the court on this appeal, or to the court below on the motion made to it, to read into the instrument an agreement not there found. We have, then, a stipulation of the parties, pursuant to which the appellant confessed the averments of the bill by failing to enter an appearance thereto, and pursuant to which it performed .other conditions of the stipulation, all of which involved more or. less
It is a fundamental principle of equity that one party to an agreement, by whatever name called, whether contract, stipulation, or anything else, cannot be relieved of its burdens while holding on to its benefits. That is exactly what the appellees sought to do, and what they were permitted to do by the court below. They did not offer to put the appellant in statu quo, even to the extent that it was possible to do so; they did not offer to permit the appellant’s default to be set aside and the interlocutory decree to be vacated, to the end that the appellant might, if it elected to do so, contest the suit on the merits; but, holding on to the substantial advantages secured by virtue of the stipulation, they asked to be, and were, by the judgment appealed from, relieved of the one and only obligation they agreed to perform as a consideration for the benefits thus received.
In this there was manifest error, for which the judgment appealed from must be, and is, reversed, with instructions to strike out that portion thereof providing “that the complainants * * * be not required to enter satisfaction of this decree, as provided by the sixth clause of the stipulation filed herein upon the 3d day of December, 1904.”