Thatcher v. West Chester Street Railway Co.

Citations

• 35 Pa. Super. 615
• 1908 Pa. Super. LEXIS 91

Syllabus

<p>Contract — Ambiguous contract — Interpretation—Surrounding circumstances — Acfs of the parties.</p> <p>In construing the meaning of an ambiguous contract the court will consider the surrounding circumstances at the time the contract was made, and also the interpretation put upon it by the parties themselves as evidence by their course of dealing under it.</p> <p>In an action against a street railway company it appeared that the plaintiff had granted to the defendant, an electric railway company, the right to lay its tracks across his farm for a distance of about one mile as a part of the extension of its original railway. The consideration for the grant was a promise to the plaintiff to furnish him four annual tickets which should enable him and parties whom he designated “to ride in the cars operated over the proposed electric railway owned and operated, or may be owned and operated ” by the company. The plaintiff received four tickets for the first year which entitled him to ride over the whole of defendant’s system as it was then in operation. At the end of the year he was tendered tickets limited to the extension which ran through his farm. It appeared that this extension did not carry him to the large town to which the plaintiff and his family were accustomed to travel for business and social reasons. Under the limited tickets plaintiff was obliged to pay fare from the end of the extension to' the town. He brought suit for the aggregate of fares which he had been compelled to pay after the limited tickets had been issued to him. Held, that the plaintiff was entitled to recover the amount of his claim.</p>