Curtin v. People's Natural Gas Co.

Citations

• 233 Pa. 397
• 82 A. 503
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 841

Syllabus

<p>Contracts — Sales-^-lnstructions—Agreement to pay vendor’s debt as part of consideration — Statement of claim — Failure to traverse — Affidavit of defense — Rules of court — Evidence—Sunday contracts.</p> <p>1. Where in an action by vendor against vendee for the purchase price of machinery it appears that the defendant, apparently for its own protection, had agreed to use part of the consideration to pay off a chattel mortgage on the goods and had failed to do so, the defendant is not entitled to an instruction to the effect that the plaintiff could recover only the excess of the agreed purchase price over such mortgage claim, there being no evidence of a novation.</p> <p>2. Where in such a case the plaintiff in his statement sets up that the defendant purchased the articles “as set forth in a schedule hereto attached and made part hereof, to which schedule plaintiff has attached the original cost price of each item” and agreed to take them “at the original cost price,” and the affidavit of defense does not either directly or indirectly deny the correctness of the schedule or that the figures truly represent the original cost prices, it is not error to permit a copy of the schedule to be read to the jury in view of a rule of the court below making the allegation conclusive in the absence of a traverse of the facts therein contained. And where after such ruling the schedule is put in evidence by the plaintiff without objection and this is followed by the defendant placing in evidence the statement of claim containing the schedule with the figures attached, without any restriction on its use, the schedule in its entirety, figures and all, is before the jury.</p> <p>3. In such a case it is not error to admit in evidence mortgages from the plaintiff to a third party as corroborative of a witness who testified that the plaintiff purchased the goods with her own money or by giving securities upon her own property, where defendant was making the point that the plaintiff