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48 S.D. 110

Drury v. Augsburg

South Dakota Supreme Court

Decided February 16, 1925

South Dakota Supreme Court · decided 1925-02-16

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Unless the broker and his employer had expressly stipulated to the contrary, the broker is entitled to his compensation upon the completion of the negotiations- he undertook, irrespective of whether or not the contract negotiated! is ever consummated, so long as the failure to- carry it through to a successful completion is not du.e to any fault of the broker.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Warren v. Temte

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1925-02-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently August 1974

3 state decisions

10192519301940195019601970decided

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 →

BURCH, Circuit Judge.

¶1This is an action to recover a broker’s commission for the sale of real estate. The disposition of the' case depénds upon conflicting evidence submitted to a jury under proper instructions, and the verdict should not be disturbed. The requested instructions, wherein they state the law clearly, have been fully covered by the instructions given. There was no error in refusing to give the instructions requested nor error in the instructions given by the court. The defendant did not own all of the land he contracted to sell, and the contract of sale, although executed, and a payment made thereon, was never performed. Because defendant was not the owner of all the land and the contract was not fully performed, appellant contends (and this is the only proposition upon which he cites any authorities) that plain*112tiff and defendant were engaged in a joint venture which failed, and for that reason plaintiff ought not to recover a commission as upon an ordinary brokerage agreement. The cases cited by the appellant all cover matters in which there was an inherent defect in the title known to the brokers at the time of listing of the property for sale and in those cases the title failed by reason of the defect without any fault of the seller. In this case the question of whether or not the failure of performance was due to defendant’s failure to acquire title, or due to defendant’s refusal to perform, was fully submitted to the jury under proper instructions. Defendant asked an instruction on this question, and, while that was not given, the court covered the matter in two separate paragraphs of his instructions.

¶2Unless the broker and his employer had expressly stipulated to- the contrary, the broker is entitled to his compensation upon the completion of the negotiations he undertook, irrespective of whether or not the contract negotiated is ever consummated, so long as the failure to carry it through to a successful completion is not due to any fault of the brokers. 4 R. C. E. 310.

¶3Finding no error in the record, the judgment appealed from is affirmed.

BURCH, Circuit Judge, sitting in lieu of ANDERSON, J., disqualified.
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