Malloy v. Drumheller

Citations

• 68 Wash. 106
• 122 P. 1005
• 1912 Wash. LEXIS 1257

Syllabus

<p>Contracts — Promoter’s Agreement— Construction — Conditions —Performance—Actions—Instructions. Where an agreement between promoters of an electric company provided that defendant, who had put up the money and retained certain shares and bonds and had borrowed $16,000 for the purpose of carrying the bonds, would, in consideration of the plaintiff’s past services, upon payment within six months of half of the sum borrowed to carry the bonds, assign one-half of the bonds- and one-half of the remaining stock to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff testified that the agreement was understood to require him to sell the bonds at any time within six months in order to earn one-half of the stock, a purchase or sale of the bonds was a condition precedent to plaintiff’s ownership of any part of the stock; and in an action for breach of contract, the jury was properly instructed to that effect and that the agreement itself did not make the plaintiff owner of the stock until he had performed the conditions.</p> <p>Same — Option—Relinquishment. In such a case, where it appears that defendant for a time requested plaintiff not to make any effort to sell the bonds, as he contemplated taking them himself as a permanent investment, but later plaintiff advised an immediate sale because of competition by a new company, and defendant finally sold both the bonds and stock before the expiration of the six months, an instruction as to plaintiff’s rights, if the jury find that the defendant prevented him from performing the conditions, is not objectionable in that it refers to the agreement as an “option,” and that plaintiff could not recover if he consent to the defendant’s acts and relinquished any rights he had under the agreement.</p> <p>Same — Termination. In such a ease, it is proper to instruct that the parties had a right to terminate the “option” agreement, and that it would be terminated by an agreement that the defendant should retain the bonds.together with the stock bonus for hi