47 N.J.L. 334 | N.J. | 1885
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The controversy between these parties may be narrowed to a very close issue, which is easily determined. The defendants refused to pay for the trucks when the .money was demanded before they were taken from the plaintiffs’ premises, and when sued for damages under the contract say that they are not bound within the terms of the sixth section of our statute of frauds. There was no writing, no. acceptance and actual receipt, nor was any earnest given or part of the purchase money j)aid. There was some point made at the
The mooted question upon which the main exception was taken to the charge was whether there was a contract for the sale of goods, wares and merchandise, for the price of $30 or upwards, which the statute of frauds says shall be void, between the plaintiffs and defendants; or were the plaintiffs only the agents by whom the defendants made this purchase of the Milburn Wagon Company ?
The attempt to draw the facts of this case into the disputed realm of what are sales within the statute and what are contracts for work and labor without the statute, which has been so well discussed in the case of Finney v. Apgar, 2 Vroom 266, is not satisfactory. The trucks were existing at the time of the contract, in solido, and were not to be made according to order; nor as things distinguished from the general business of the plaintiffs, for they were in the direct line of their business, and with that knowledge the defendants sought them to obtain the trucks. Whether these articles which were needed were standing in the salesroom of the plaintiffs, ready for delivery with slight alterations and adaptations, or whether they were in the salesroom of a business correspondent in a distant city, who was ready to sell and forward the goods to them on their credit, without knowing or caring who their customer might be, can make but little difference. The result would, in either case, be that by the intention of the parties there would be a transfer, for a price, from the plaintiffs to the defendants, of chattels in which the defendants had
The court in their charge left it to the jury to say whether the arrangement between the plaintiffs and the defendants was a contract for the sale of goods by the plaintiffs to the defendants, or whether, according to the plaintiffs’ story, the contrae1,t was for the sale of goods from the western company to the defendants. As there was no case made by the plaintiffs for this choice which was given to the jury, there was error in the charge, and the judgment will be reversed.
For affirmance — The Chief Justice. 1.
For reversal — The Chancellor, Depue, Magie, Parker, Reed, Scudder, Yan Syckel, Brown, Clement,. Cole, Paterson. 11.