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6 Cal. 19

Cunningham v. Dorsey

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1856

California Supreme Court · decided 1856-07-01

This action was brought for $3,150 damages for breach of a contract made by plaintiff and defendants, by which plaintiff was to deliver a thousand logs (of which the plaintiff delivered five hundred) at defendants’ saw-mill, and for which the latter were to pay a fixed price, and for hindering the plaintiff from fully performing his part of the contract- - the amount claimed being $6,400, the contract price, less an admitted payment.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1856-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently January 1931

8 state decisions

20185618601870188018901900191019201930decided

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.

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The opinion of the Court was delivered by Mr. Justice Heydenfeldt.

¶1Mr. Chief Justice Murray concurred.

¶2The third instruction given by the District Court, at the request of the plaintiff, is clearly erroneous. The true rule of damages is the value of the labor performed, and the amount of profit which could fairly have been derived from the labor left unperformed by the act of the defendants. Although afterwards, at the defendants’ request, the Court laid down the correct rule, yet it is impossible to say that the erroneous instruction first given had no influence upon the jury. Both stood together and were of equal force, and we cannot by computation ascertain by which one the jury was controlled.

¶3Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.

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