McCollum v. Carlucci

Citations

• 206 Pa. 312
• 55 A. 979
• 1903 Pa. LEXIS 707

Syllabus

<p>Partnership — Suits—Breach of contract — Assumpsit.</p> <p>While partnership accounts must be adjusted and settled and the liability of one partner to another ascertained by an action of account render, or by a bill in equity, this does not prevent one partner from suing another in assumpsit for damages resulting to the plaintiff from the dissolution of the partnership, wrongfully brought about by the bad faith and broken promises of the defendant.</p> <p>In an action of assumpsit by one partner against another to recover damages for breach of the contract and, wrongful dissolution of the partnership, a verdict and judgment for plaintiff will be sustained where the evidence, properly admitted, tends to show that the defendant had advised the men who had been employed by the firm in a quarry to bring suits against it, obtain judgments and sell out the partnership property, which he himself purchased; that he said the partnership was at an end; that he obtained an assignment of the lease of the quarry to plaintiff as well as of the farm on which the quarry was located, and entered judgment against plaintiff for default in payment of rent and issued execution on it; that he purchased the farm, and, with a new partner, opened a quarry close to the plaintiff’s quarry and was operating it at the time of the trial; and that, when the plaintiff sold stone to get money to pay the men, he notified the parties to whom stone had been sold not to pay him.</p> <p>In such a case the measure of damages is not the value of the quarry nor the plaintiff’s share of the profits which the defendant made, but the value of the partnership to the plaintiff.</p>