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58 N.H. 358

Flanders v. Putney

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 5, 1878

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1878-06-05

Assumpsit, for wood. Facts found by a referee. The plaintiff’s husband, having authority as her agent to make sales and delivery of wood, made a contract with the defendant to deliver him the following winter fifty cords of wood, of satisfactory quality, at a price certain, and to pay damage if the contract should not be fulfilled. Sis cords of wood only were delivered, and the defendant was obliged to purchase wood elsewhere at a greater price.

Relies on Britton v. Turner · Backman v. Charlestown · Horn v. Batchelder

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-06-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently April 1961

2 federal appellate · 6 state decisions

201878188018901900191019201930194019501960decided

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 →

Allen, J.

¶1 The plaintiff’s husband, having a general authority from her to make sales and delivery of wood, was authorized to employ the usual and necessary means to accomplish the objects of his agency; to include, in contracts made by him, their ordinary incidents of price, quality, quantity, and time of delivery. Backman v. Charlestown, 42 N. H. 125, 131, 132; Morris v. Bowen, 52 N. H. 416, 421. The contract with the defendant was authorized by the plaintiff, aijd’ it might be shown in evidence by the defendant. The plaintiff’s knowledge that her husband was selling and delivering wood to the deíehdant, was evidence from which the finding of a ratification of the contract by her was warranted. v

¶2 Under a contract for services to be rendered, or goods sold to be delivered, part performance of which the other party has received the benefit, entitles one to recover the value, at the contract price, of *359 what has been done or furnished, subject to a deduction of the damage occasioned by the breach of the contract. Britton v. Turner, 6 N. H. 481; Horn v. Batchelder, 41 N. H. 86. The value of the wood received by the defendant being no more than the damage he suffered from the nonfulfillment of the contract, the plaintiff can recover nothing.

¶3 The increase in the price of the wood, which the defendant was compelled to purchase in place of that not delivered, was properly admitted, and considered as an element in the estimate of the defendant’s damage.

¶4 Exceptions overruled.

Clark, J., did not sit.
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