Youghiogheny Iron & Coal Co. v. Smith

| Pa. | Oct 31, 1870

■ The opinion of the court was delivered, January 3d 1871, by

Sharswood, J.

— It will not be necessary to discuss the several errors assigned separately, as the principles involved in them may be stated and disposed of more briefly in a different order.

It may certainly be now regarded as a point settled, beyond all p jssible controversy, that if an agent, duly authorized, makes a contract in his own name, without disclosing his principal, and even when such principal is entirely unknown to the other contracting party, he is nevertheless bound, and damages may be recovered of him in an action for its breach. By contracting in big- own name, tbe agent only adds bis personal obligation to that of tbe person' who employs him : 2 Kent’s Com. 631 and note. The learned judge below was, therefore, perfectly right in treating the question presented to him, of the liability of the defendants on the contract of Wickersham, as one merely of power, and in submitting to the jury as • the only question whether he was duly authorized to make the contract in question for the sale of their iron. That the notes for the price were drawn to Wickersham’s order, and that a bill for the damages was afterwards rendered by the plaintiff to him, and in his name alone, were facts altogether immaterial; nor would it help the plaintiffs in error on another trial, if they should prove by Wickersham that the company had nothing to do with the contract or with the promissory notes, if the fact remains, as established by this verdict, that Wickersham was their agent, with full power to make the contract for the breach of which the action was brought.

As to the question whether when a manufacturer undertakes to make and deliver an article of a designated quality, and in fact delivers one of an inferior kind, the vendee is bound to return it, and cannot keep it and resort to an action for damages, which has been so elaborately argued on both sides, it does not arise on this record, and we are not called upon to decide it. The learned judge below, in the manner in which he submitted the case to the jury, substantially ruled that point in favor of the plaintiffs in error, and they have, therefore, no reason to find fault with the charge. He put the case to them exclusively upon the fact of a special agreement between the parties, and it is not alleged or pretended that there was not evidence in the cause to justify such submission. If the jury believed that the vendee notified the agent of the vendors of the bad quality of the iron, delivered and requested him to take it away — if the agent did not do so, but requested the vendee to let it remain on his premises, and promised that he would make it all right with him, so that he should lose nothing by it — surely these facts dispensed with any return of the iron, and made the vendors responsible for the damage sustained by their breach of contract in delivering an article of an inferior quality to that which they had contracted to deliver. After such a tender and refusal, it was not the duty of the vendee to keep the iron on hand, especially as it was a cum- ■ brous article, to wait the good pleasure of the vendors, but he could dispose of or use it, and all that the vendors could in ¡reason ask would be a credit for its actual market value.

The rule laid down by the learned judge for the measure of damages was undoubtedly right and perfectly accurate. If the jury found from the evidence the facts submitted to them, the plaintiff was entitled to recover the difference between what the inferior article was worth in the market and what he was obliged to pay for good iron to supply its place. And as the iron contracted for was to have been delivered before the maturity of the notes given for it, it certainly cannot be questioned that if these notes were renewed at the request of Wickersham, with whom, according to the theory of the plaintiffs in error, the vendee was dealing as the agent of an undisclosed and unknown principal, and he specially promised to pay the discount upon their renewal, the plaintiff would have an undoubted right also to recover the money so paid with interest.

Thus the defendant’s points were all substantially answered in the charge, and in a manner of which he has no just cause to complain.

Judgment affirmed.