47 Wash. 472 | Wash. | 1907
This is an action between partners for an accounting, settlement, and dissolution. The partners conducted a logging business upon the Nema river, in Pacific county, Washington. The partnership at first consisted of the plaintiff, Williams, and the defendants, Pedersen and Hansen. After the firm business had continued a few weeks, Hansen dropped out, and it is conceded that thenceforward he was out of the firm; and that, during the time he was with them, the partnership, composed of the three, cut and placed in the river seventy-eight thousand feet of logs, one-third of the net proceeds of which each of the three partners is entitled to receive. After Hansen left, Williams and Pedersen continued operations as a firm. The court found that they cut three hundred and thirty thousand eight hundred feet, board measure, of sawlogs, and that of the net proceeds from the last-mentioned logs each of the two last-named partners
It is contended that the court erred in its findings. This contention arises chiefly from appellant’s claim that respondent' was away much of the time while the Pedersen and Williams logs were being cut, and appellant urges that respondent is not entitled to share in logs cut while he was away. The evidence sharply conflicts as to the amount of time respondent was absent in person. His testimony was to the effect that he was there practically all the time, and that when he was away his brother worked in his place. Nothing in the record indicates that the court should not have accepted respondent’s testimony as true, and, if true, he reasonably did his share of the work, or caused it to be done. The partnership had not been dissolved and its work continued, even under appellant’s theory, at such times as respondent was present and assisted therein.
Appellant seems, however, to adopt the view that the partnership work was so intermittently done that it ceased when respondent was away, and’that .appellant then cut logs at
“We find no case in which it has been held that a mere inequality of services by partners is alone ground for compensating the one doing the greater part of the work, in the absence of an agreement, express or implied.”
See, also, Smith v. Brown, 44 W. Va. 342, 30 S. E. 160; Scott w. Boyd, 101 Va. 28, 42 S. E. 918; Lamb v. Wilson, 70 Neb. 729, 97 N. W. 325; Whitney v. Whitney, 27 Ky. Law 561, 88 S. W. 311; Mills v. Fellows, 30 La. Ann. 824; Coddington v. Idell, 29 N. J. Eq. 504; Major v. Todd, 84 Mich. 85; Bennett’s Adm’r v. Russell’s Adm’r, 34 Mo. 524.
There are instances where the course of dealing of the partners is such, and also where the services rendered are of such an extraordinary character, that the law implies a contract to pay one partner for extra services, but such facts are not established by the evidence here. The findings are sustained by the evidence in the record, and we see no reason for - disturbing them.
The judgment is affirmed.
Fullerton, Rudkin, Crow, Root, Dunbar, and Mount, JJ., concur.