Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

64 Tex. 131

Kohn Bros. v. Washer & August

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1885

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1885-07-01

<p>Appeal from Tarrant. Tried below before M. D. Priest, Special Judge.</p> <p>The opinion states the facts.</p>

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Commercial Traveller”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1885-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 1934

5 state decisions

20188518901900191019201930decided

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 →

Watts, J. Com. App.

¶1Appellants employed Bex as a commercial traveler, to solicit orders for the merchandise in which they dealt as wholesale merchants, and, to facilitate the business and the better to enable him to secure orders, they furnished him with samples to be exhibited to dealers in soliciting their orders. Bex sold these *132samples to appellees, and converted the proceeds to his own use, and in this suit by appellants to recover of the appellees the value of the samples, on the ground that Bex had no authority to make the sale, the court in effect instructed the jury that if the sale of the samples was embraced within the real or apparent scope of Bex’s authority, then appellants would be bound by this sale, and could not recover in this suit.

¶2As shown by the evidence, the extent of Bex’s authority was to exhibit the samples, to solicit, receive and forward orders for merchandise to the appellants, together with a statement of the financial condition of the party. making the order, and if this was satisfactory appellants filled the order, and shipped the same to the party who ordered the goods.

¶3There is no evidence in the record as to any custom or usage respecting the disposition of samples by commercial travelers.

¶4There is no controversy as to the correctness of the law as announced by the court; as to third parties dealing with an agent of another, within the real or apparent authority of the agent as held out by the principal, that the latter will ordinarily be bound by such acts of the agent is elementary.

¶5But it is claimed that the instruction, so far as it related to the apparent authority of Bex, was not authorized by the evidence. Bow in the absence of any evidence of usage which might be considered as enlarging the authority of Bex, it would seem that the objection is well founded.

¶6Under the circumstances the extent of his authority was to exhibit the goods as samples and not as merchandise for sale. And no apparent authority to sell the samples would exist, or arise out of the nature of the agency.

¶7It has been held that a salesman authorized to sell goods on a credit has no authority to subsequently collect the price in the name of the principal, and a payment to him will not discharge the purchaser, unless some authority to collect, beyond what is implied in the mere power to make the sale, is shown. Seiple v. Irwin, 30 Penn. St., 513; Law v. Stokes, 32 N. J. (Law), 219.

¶8In our opinion the evidence did not authorize the charge, and the evidence upon the other issues is such that this error may have been material.

¶9Our conclusion is that the judgment ought to be reversed and the cause remanded.

¶10Bevebsed and eemanded.

¶11[Opinion adopted May 5, 1885.]

/64/tex/131 · .json · Public domain