Vashon Fruit Union v. Godwin & Co.

Citations

• 87 Wash. 384
• 151 P. 797
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 910

Syllabus

<p>Factors—Compensation—Commissions — Contract — Construction. Where a factor’s contract for the sale of all the strawberries of a fruit union required him to pay over the net proceeds, being the gross amount of sales “less the customary and reasonable charges” and the commission thereinafter mentioned, and that the factor should receive ten per cent of the net amount on all sales as full compensation for services, commissions allowed by the.factor to his distributing agent in the east, and by such agent to local brokers, cannot be deducted as part of the “customary and reasonable charges”; since the contract fixed the commissions for making a sale at ten per cent.</p> <p>Appeal—Review—Harmless Error. Failure of a judgment to segregate the amounts due to each plaintiff is not error of which the defendant can complain.</p> <p>Parties—Necessary Parties—Plaintiffs—Trustee of Express Trust. Where a fruit growers’ union entered into a contract with a factor, making him the del credere agent of the union and all of its members, who were not named in the contract, and requiring the members to deal directly with the agent, who was to keep separate accounts with and remit directly to the individual shipper, the union has no authority to collect the sums due its members, and is not a trustee of an express trust within Rem. & Bal. Code, § 180, defining a trustee of an express trust as a person with whom or in whose name a contract is made for the benefit of another, and authorizing him to maintain an action in his own name without joining the persons for whose benefit the contract was made; and the members are necessary parties to an action to collect the amounts due them.</p> <p>Same—Plaintiffs—Representative Suit. In such a case, neither ■ the union nor part of its members could maintain an action for the use of all the members, under Rem. & Bal. Code, § 190, providing that, when the question is one of common or general interest to many persons, or where the parties are nume