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80 Ill. 101

Combs v. Steele

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided September 15, 1875

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1875-09-15

Joseph E. Gaby, Judge, presiding. This was an action of assumpsit, brought by the appellees, against the appellant. The declaration contained only the common counts for goods, wares and merchandise sold and delivered, for money paid out and expended, and for work, labor and material.

Relies on St. Louis, Alton & Rock Island R. R. v. Coultas

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently June 1975

11 state decisions

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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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Mr. Chief Justice Scott

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court:

¶2The contract in evidence obligates the owners, or agents, whose names are appended to it, to pay plaintiffs a certain sum per foot for paving the street in front of their property, each a definite number of feet by them respectively owned. Evidence introduced on the trial shows plaintiffs had done the work, in paving the street, according to the specifications of the contract, in a workmanlike manner, to the satisfaction of the Board of Public Works. On this question, the testimony is quite full. Nothing, therefore, remained to be done but to pay for the work done according to the stipulated price, and the contract was, therefore, admissible in evidence under the common counts.

¶3Contracts will be construed to be joint or several, as the case may be, where the intent of the respective parties appears on the face of such obligations, and that construction will be adopted which is most consistent with the words employed to express the undertaking of the several parties. Robertson v. March, 3 Scam. 198; St. Louis, Alton and Rock Island Railroad Co. v. Coultas, 33 Ill. 188.

¶4Accordingly it appears, on the face of the contract in evidence, the undertaking of the obligors was several, and it will admit of no other construction consistently with the language employed. Each “undersigned property owner” agreed to pay for the paving of a definite number of feet in front of his property. Should the contract be construed to be a joint obligation, each obligor would be liable for the whole amount of work done under it. Such a construction would do violence to the intention of the parties, as the same plainly appears on the face of the obligation itself.

¶5It was within the discretion of the court to set aside the order of dismissal, and reinstate the cause on the trial calendar. Where there has been no palpable abuse of that discretion with which a court is clothed as will work manifest injustice, its exercise will not be reviewed in an appellate court.

¶6The judgment will be affirmed.

¶7Judgment affirmed.

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