238 Mass. 449 | Mass. | 1921
This is an action for the breach of a written contract interchangeably executed between the parties for the sale by the defendants and the purchase.by the plaintiff of a store. The writ is dated April 10, 1919. No question is raised as to parties. The agreement as printed in the record provided, among other matters, that the transfer of title should take place on or before April 7, 1919, at three o’clock in the afternoon at a designated place, and that the defendants should secure a lease for the
The contention of the defendants is that, the correctness of the rulings above quoted not being reserved by the report, they became the law of the case, and that a finding for the plaintiff was impossible as matter of law if those rulings were followed. If the judge had followed those rulings as his guide, after having made the findings of fact, he ought to have found for the defendants. The rights of the parties ought to be determined by the application of correct rules of law to the facts. It is manifest, by the application of correct rules of law to the facts, that the plaintiff is entitled to recover and that the order for judgment in his favor was right. The rulings of law made by the judge were wrong. This is an action at law, not a suit in equity. In an action at law for the breach of a contract to convey or to transfer property, the plaintiff makes out a case by showing that he was prepared to carry out his part of the contract according to its terms and that the contract was not performed by the other party within the time specified in the contract. The rule in equity is different. Mansfield v. Wiles, 221 Mass. 75, 81.
The erroneous rulings of law had no rational bearing upon the intellectual processes or the course of reasoning by which the find
The other requests for rulings, which were denied, are waived by not having been argued.
Order dismissing report affirmed.