149 Pa. 178 | Pa. | 1892
Opinion by
The specifications of 'error are thirty-three in number, and fill one hundred and twelve printed pages. It would be profitless to discuss them in detail.
The main burden of the argument is- against the admission of parol evidence to show a different contract from the one in
The same considerations sustain the admission in evidence of the negotiations which led up to the written agreement of April 1887. They were not introduced to contradict or supplement the writing, but to show the reason it was made in the way it was, and thereby to sustain the allegation that the arrangement was changed by the parties when that reason ceased to exist.
The only other point that needs to be separately noticed, is the valuation of certain goods in the inventory. The contract of dissolution of partnership provides for an inventory of part of the stock “ at the original or wholesale cost thereof,” and defendant contends that that means the cost Holloway & Co. paid for it. The learned judge below declined to adopt this construction. The phrase is not free from obscurity. If the cost to Holloway & Co. had been meant it would have been easy and natural to say “ cost to the firm,” or “ actual cost ” or some equivalent phrase. The use of the word original seems to mean something more, and to require us to go behind the price paid by the firm to an earlier or original price. Prima facie therefore it would seem to mean the price when the goods first, i. e. originally, were bought for the purpose of being made part of the stock of the store, whether by Holloway & Co. or by their predecessors in the business. This would seem to be the original price of the goods considered as part of the stock to be inventoried with reference to which the words were used in the writing. It is said that when the firm bought the stock from the Montour Co. there was a large quantity of goods marked at the wholesale cost prices paid for them by the Mon-tour Co., and that these goods had been inventoried at these prices a short time before the sale. Such evidence would strongly confirm the construction we have adopted, but even without it, that construction seems to be the most natural meaning of the words used. The correctness of the inventory was a question of fact for the jury and we do not find any error in the manner in which it was submitted to them.
Judgment affirmed.