Sultan Railway & Timber Co. v. Great Northern Railway Co.

Citations

• 58 Wash. 604
• 109 P. 320
• 1910 Wash. LEXIS 976

Syllabus

<p>Carriers—Goods—Contracts—Consideration. Where a logging company was insisting upon its right to cross a railway at grade, which was objected to by the railway company, and the parties entered into negotiations to adjust their respective rights, and by mutual concessions reached an agreement in which all their differences were settled by the railway company’s agreeing to carry logs at a certain rate, the agreement was intended as, and had all the essential elements of, a contract.</p> <p>Same—Contracts—Mutuality. An agreement by a railway company, to carry at a certain rate, all of the logs that a logging company should tender for carriage, is not void for lack of mutuality, where there was an independent consideration in that the logging company forbore its right to cross the railway at grade, so long as the rate was continued, although there was no agreement to ship any quantity of logs.</p> <p>Same-—Contracts—Consideration—Disputed Claims. A logging company’s forbearance of a right claimed by it to cross a railway at grade constitutes a sufficient consideration for a contract by the railway company to carry logs at a certain rate, whether the claim for the grade crossing was well founded or not^ where the parties treated it as a right and contracted with reference to it.</p> <p>Same—Contracts—Construction. A letter by a railway company to a logging company agreeing to carry “your” timber at a certain rate, will be construed to refer not only to timber owned by the logging company at the time, but to any tributary timber which it might tender for carriage, where the same was under discussion at the time the negotiations were carried on between the parties, and the logging company made known its purpose to acquire such other timber.</p> <p>Same—Discrimination—Contracts—-Validity. The law prohibiting discrimination between shippers is not violated by a contract of a railway company to carry the logs of a logging company between certain points at a specified rate,