Schnaier v. Schmidt

The action was brought to recover the price of certain inks alleged to have been sold and delivered by the plaintiffs’ firm to the defendants. In the complaint the defendant Schmidt was alleged to have been a partner in their business with the plaintiffs, as well as a partner with the other defendant as the purchasers of the inks in controversy. It was stated in the complaint that he declined being a party in the action as plaintiff, and

In their support authorities from other states have been presented in which it has been held that an action at law cannot be maintained by one firm against another when one of the parties is a partner in each of the firms. But these authorities are not decisive of this appeal, for the reason that the proposition has been settled that where an action cannot be maintained in the legal forum, there a suit to settle the controversy and for the appropriate redress may be maintained in equity. Williams v. Kiernan, 25 Hun, 355 , and cases there referred to.

And if it should be held that an action for goods sold and delivered as a legal action could not be maintained when one of the parties was a member of the two firms engaged in the sale and purchase, yet that would not defeat the plaintiffs’ action, for the facts were all set forth by the complaint. And as an answer was served, then by § 1207 of the Code of Civil Pro., the court has been authorized to permit the plaintiff to take any judgment consistent with the case made in the complaint and embraced within the issue. And if this complaint failed to state a cause of action at law, it did present by the facts alleged in it a cause of action in equity which the parties were entitled to have considered and determined in the action. The court was right, therefore, in its refusal to dismiss. And that the action was tried before the jury will not change the rights or liabilities of the parties to it, for no objection was taken by the defendants to that mode of trial. . If it had been, a trial of the action as an action in equity might then have been ordered, and the objection obviated. Neither has any objection to the mode of trial been presented in support of the appeals. And as the action contained the proper subject-matter of an action in equity, although it was tried before a jury, the court was right in refusing to dismiss the complaint at the close of the plaintiffs’ evidence. And that such an action may be maintained to recover the value of property sold and delivered by one firm to the other was held in Cole v. Reynolds, 18 N. Y., 74 . And that a judgment for a specific sum of money was necessary to be awarded in the determination of the action in the plaintiffs’ favor formed no legal ground of objection to the right to maintain it. Murtha v. Curley, 90 N. Y., 372 .

Neither did the circumstance of Schmidt being a member of each of the firms present a case for an accounting, for the cause of action set forth in the complaint was a separate and distinct transaction, not of a partnership nature requiring the settlement of

As the case was disclosed by the complaint, therefore, no substantial objection existed to the right of the plaintiffs to maintain it.

But on the part of the defendants it was denied that Schmidt ever became a member of the plaintiffs’ firm. And the evidence given by Schnaier as a witness left the fact in doubt whether Schmidt did in fact become a partner in the plaintiffs’ firm. If he had been such partner, then the plaintiffs were entitled to recover, if the inks were sold and delivered, as they were alleged, to the defendants’ firm, a-much larger sum than that for which the jury rendered their verdict. But on the part of the defendants it was claimed that Schmidt had purchased a machine for the plaintiffs and had advanced to them the sum of $300 at the request of Mr. Schnaier. And the jury were directed by the court if those were the facts, and he was not a partner, then this sum of $475 should be deducted from the price of the inks as that was given on behalf of the plaintiffs. And in their verdict, as the amount was stated, it appears that the jury must have made these deductions, and consequently found that Schmidt was not a member of the plaintiffs’ firm. And with that fact found in the action it could regularly be maintained as a legal action, triable as a matter of course before a jury.

The defendants, also, by way of defense, insisted that the inks were delivered to them to be sold on commission, and the court directed the jury if that were the fact that the plaintiffs could not recover. By their verdict they must consequently have found against the defendants as to this defense, and that the inks were, in point of fact, sold and delivered as that had been alleged by the plaintiffs to the defendants. And in that view no substantial ■objection arises in any form to the recovery secured in the action.

It was not important in any view to show the time when the defendant Lehrberger first learned that the plaintiffs claimed the goods to have been sold and not consigned. Neither was it to prove whether he knew before the bills were delivered that such a claim was made, nor to prove that he ever made any agreement or said to the plaintiffs that he would pay for the merchandise which had been sent at the prices stated in the bills. For the important issues in the case were whether the plaintiffs could maintain the action in the form in which they had brought it, and whether the inks were, in fact, sold or delivered to the defendants to be sold on commission. Upon these matters of fact none of the evidence excluded by the court could have had the least material bearing. The court excluded at first the inquiry whether this witness had any other conversation than had been stated with Mr. Schnaier at the time the check was made out for the $300.

Van Brunt, P. J., and O’Brien, J., concur.