Boon & Hill Co. v. Prudential Trust Co.

Citations

• 39 Pa. Super. 65
• 1909 Pa. Super. LEXIS 438

Syllabus

<p>Assignment for the benefit of creditors — Contract of assignee — Additional liability of assignee — Evidence.</p> <p>1. In an action against the assignees for the benefit of creditors of a contractor to hold them personally liable‘for labor and material furnished in completing a building operation, a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff will be sustained where the evidence for the plaintiffs, although contradicted, tends to show that in giving the order for the labor and material nothing was said by the defendants as to their contracting in their representative capacity only, and that the plaintiffs understood that they were dealing with the defendants in their individual capacity.</p> <p>2. Assignees for the benefit of creditors are of the class of trustees who are personally liable on their contracts.</p> <p>3. Where there is evidence partly written and partly oral that the assignees for the benefit of creditors made a contract in their representative, and not their individual, capacity, such evidence is for the jury, and the court cannot say as a matter of law that the contract was only binding upon the assignees in their representative capacity.</p> <p>4. When matters of fact, depending on oral testimony, are connected with and necessary to a proper understanding of the written evidence, the court is not bound to construe the latter as though it stood alone, and an admixture of oral and written evidence draws the whole to the jury.</p>