Barber Asphalt-Pav. Co. v. Standard Asphalt Co.

and deal exclusively, in asphalt obtained from the Barber Company by or through Standard Company.” It can hardly be doubted that the Barber Company’s consent that the defendant might “sell land asphalt for the purpose of laying sheet pavement for a period of one year” from the date of the agreement was granted to give the defendant a fair opportunity to rid itself of its stock on hand. It was certainly of little value, if the plaintiff’s contention that the defendant “could sell land asphalt for all pavements laid within the year 1893, and not otherwise,” is correct. That construction ymuld impose upon the defendant a guaranty that all land asphalt sold by it would be used by the purchaser within the year. If, for any cause, the work for which it was sold should be interrupted and delayed, and completion thereof during the year be prevented, the use of the asphalt by the purchaser at a later date to complete the work would be a violation by the defendant of its agreement with the plaintiff; and the plaintiff would thereby become entitled to declare the agreement at an end, under the right reserved in the eleventh clause. The defendant therefore could not with safety sell any portion of its stock on hand, for it could not possibly foresee what obstacles might prevent its use during the year. The interpretation put upon the agreement by the learned counsel for the plaintiff seems to me to be a strained and unreasonable one, and contrary to the evident intention of the parties. That intention was that the defendant, during a defined period, to wit, during the year following the date of the agreement, should be free to make sales of its stock of land asphalt for a specific purpose, to wit, for laying sheet pavements in designated localities, to wit, the cities of Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Troy. It is visible, I think, on the face of the agreement, and argument cannot make it plainer. Even if there were doubt about it, the plaintiff, being the author of the agreement, cannot claim to have its obscure clauses construed liberally in its own favor. The “rule of grammar” to which counsel refers was rather harshly treated in Smith v. Robson, 148 N. Y. 252 , 42 N. E. 677 . In that case the contract was between a theatrical manager and an actor, and contained this provision: “The said J. R. Smith [the actor] further agrees that if, at any time, Stuart Robson [the manager] shall feel satisfied that he is incompetent to perform the duties which he has contracted to perform in good faith, or is inattentive to business, * * * then he [Robson] may annul this contract by giving two weeks’ notice to said J. R. Smith.” Andrews, C. J., said: “There is a little obscurity as to the application of the qualifying words ‘in good faith,’ but we think it is sufficiently plain that they were intended to apply to the conduct of the defendant, as if the contract had read, ‘if in good faith the employer shall be satisfied.’ ” So the force of the argument of counsel, based on the absence of a comma after “sheet pavement,” in the sixth clause of the agreement, is badly shaken, at least, by Grinnell v. Kiralfy, 55 Hun, 422 , 8 N. Y. Supp. 623 , which was the case of a contract between manager and actor very similar to that in Smith v. Robson. Judge Barrett said: “The defendant [the manager] contends that as there was no comma, in the original instrument, after the word ‘contracted,’ the good faith referred to was his in making the contract. The plaintiff, on the other hand, claims that the words ‘in good faith’ refer to the previous expression, ‘shall feel satisfied,’ and that thus she was protected from a capricious or arbitrary discharge. We think the latter is the fair and reasonable construction of this contract.”

such asphalt to be delivered and accepted before dates mentioned in said contracts (some before July 1, 1893; some before November 1, 1893; some before June 1, 1894; some before September 1, 1894; and -the remainder during the years 1894 and 1895), and that the 2,861 tons of asphalt referred to in the complaint were delivered by the defendant under the said contracts, and were actually used in pavements in 1894 and 1895. The dates of the deliveries have not been shown. When a sale is defined as “a transfer of the absolute title to property for an agreed price’’ (Story, Sales, § 1), or as a “meeting of minds, by which a title passes from one and vests in another” (Butler v. Thomson, 92 U. S. 415 ), the definition covers or includes the entire transaction, which, from being executory, has become executed by delivery, or payment, or performance of conditions, or separation or identification and appropriation of the thing sold, or other act or event on which the transfer of title is, by the agreement of the parties, made to depend. The question whether a transaction is a sale by which title has passed to the purchaser usually arises either on a claim asserted by a third party, as in Hatch v. Oil Co., 100 U. S. 124 , where the property was seized under execution as the property of the seller, or, as in Manufacturing Co. v. Edwards, 29 Hun, 509 , and Pinckney v. Darling, 3 App. Div. 553 , 38 N. Y. Supp. 411 , where the property was seized under process as the property of the buyer, or when, before actual delivery, the property is destroyed or damaged, as in Olyphant v. Baker, 5 Denio, 379 ; Terry v. Wheeler, 25 N. Y. 520 , where the barley and lumber were destroyed by fire; Burrows v. Whitaker, 71 N. Y. 291 , where the logs were swept away by a flood; Mee v. McNider, 109 N. Y. 500 , 17 N. E. 424 , where the cocoa was damaged while in transit from the port of shipment. It is, however, matter .of common knowledge that in ordinary, everyday transactions the distinction between a sale that passes title, and an executory contract of sale, is not heeded or observed. If goods are sold, to be delivered and paid for at a future time, business men describe the transaction, and properly describe it, as a sale. In the Century Dictionary “sale” is defined as follows: “In law, a contract for the transfer of property from one person to another for a valuable consideration. * * * It is also often used as indicating a present transfer, as distinguished from a contract to transfer at a future time, which is sometimes termed an ‘executory sale.’ ” In Decker v. Furniss, 14 N. Y. 611 , the contract stated, “Brown sells to Eurniss,” etc. Judge Comstock said that the language imported an executed sale, but that phrases of that sort are used in a very loose sense and are quite inconclusive, and that “their literal signification is often overruled by the tenor and purpose of the whole instrument”; and Judge Wright added, “An adherence to the literal purport of the word ‘sells’ would overrule the intention which the provisions of the agreement, as a whole, plainly indicate.” It is plain to me that the words “may sell” were not used by the plaintiff, in the sixth clause of the agreement, in any other than the ordinary sense, and that the plaintiff did not thereby intend to restrict the defendant to sales of land asphalt by which title would at once or presently pass to .the purchasers. They intended “sell,” in the sixth clause, to have the same meaning as the same word in the fifth clause, and it would certainly be absurd to say that by the fifth clause the defendant is prohibited from contracting to sell for future delivery asphalt purchased by it from the plaintiff.

Edward Wells, Jr., and Avery D. Andrews, for appellant.

Edgar J. Nathan, for respondent.