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73 Ark. 470

Main v. Dearing

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided January 7, 1905

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1905-01-07

John N. Tirrman, Judge. STATRMRNT BY Tl-IR COURT. W. F. Main & Company, who claimed to be “manufacturing jewelers,” and to have the “largest jewelry factory in the world,” sold to Dearing & Wallace, merchants, at Prairie Grove, Ark., a varied assortment of jewelry. The contract contained an invoice thereof, stating what each article was and its price. The bill aggregated $180.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“‘‘Ordinarily the law implies no warranty of quality, leaving that a matter of contract between parties, but there is an exception to this rule as thoroughly recognized as the rule itself. When a manufacturer offers his goods for-sale, where the opportunity of inspection is not present before the purchase, the vendee necessarily relies on his knowledge of his own manufacture. In such cases the law implies a warranty that the article shall be merchantable and reasonably fit for the purpose for which it was intended.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Crow v. Fones Bros. Hardware Co.

Relies on Bunch v. Weil · Weed v. Dyer · Curtis & Co. Manufacturing v. Williams

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1905-01-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently November 1963 · most notably Mitchell Manufacturing Co. v. Kempner (1907), Neel v. West-Winfree Tobacco Co. (1920)

25 state decisions

1001905191019201930194019501960decided

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 →

Hila, C. J.,

¶1(after stating the facts.) Appellants claim that there is no fraud proved to vitiate the contract, and by its terms the appellees were required to exhaust the exchanging • process therein provided for before they could defend a suit for failure of consideration. It is thus written in the contract, but there is also written into the contract, in still bolder letters, the law. Ordinarily, the law implies no warranty of quality, leaving that a matter of contract between parties, but there is an exception to this rule as thorough^ recognized as the rule itself. When a manufacturer offers his goods for sale, where the opportunity of inspection is not present before the purchase, the vendee necessarily relies on his knowledge of his own manufacture. In such cases the law implies a warranty that the articles shall be merchantable and reasonably fit for the purpose for which it was intended. Curtis v. Williams, 48 Ark. 325; Weed v. Dyer, 53 Ark. 155; Bunch v. Weil, 72 Ark. 343, 80 S. W. Rep. 582.

¶2Mr. Benjamin thus amplifies this statement of the rule: “He cannot, without any warranty, insist that it shall be of any par^ ticular quality or fineness, but the intention of both parties must be taken to be that it shall be salable in the market under the denomination mentioned in contract. The purchaser cannot be supposed to buy goods to lay them on a dunghill.” -Benjamin on Sales, § 656.

¶3The jury having found to be true the testimony that these goods were worthless, then this implied warranty, which the law wrote into this contract, overrides all other terms of it.

¶4There is no error in the judgment, and it is affirmed.

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