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22 Mich. 265

Turner v. McCarty

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided January 12, 1871

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1871-01-12

This was an action of assumpsit, brought by appeal from the judgment of a , justice of the peace into the Circuit Court for the County of Kent, wherein Thomas McCarty was plaintiff and John A. Turner defendant. The plaintiff declared for work and labor performed by him for the contractor for street paving in the city of Grand Eapids.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“‘ ‘ There was no contract relation between the parties to this suit. Turner was only bound to his assignor. ’ ’”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Peoples Savings Bank v. Geistert

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-01-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 1931

7 state decisions

301871188018901900191019201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Campbell, Ch. J.

¶1Turner, having become assignee of a grading contract, and the former contractor having become liable to several persons whom he had employed in various capacities to work for him, executed, on the same paper which contained the assignment to him, the following article:

¶2“I, John A. Turner, of the city of Grand Rapids, and state of Michigan, do hereby agree and bind myself to pay. all sums of money due persons for labor heretofore performed on said street, on account of grading said street. The above word ‘labor’ is intended to apply to shovelers and teamsters only. J. A. Turner. Grand Rapids, December 4, 1869.”

¶3Suit was brought by one of these laborers against Turner, and the defense, as presented by the exceptions, rested on the want of privity of contract between plaintiff and defendant.

¶4The case falls directly within the principle of Pipp v. Reynolds, decided at the last April term. There was no contract relation between the parties to this suit. Turner was only bound to his assignor. The judgment must be reversed, with costs, and a new trial granted.

The other Justices concurred.
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