Whitman v. Bowden

Citations

• 27 S.C. 53
• 2 S.E. 630
• 1887 S.C. LEXIS 93

Syllabus

<p>1. Nine owners of contiguous lots united together for the purpose of erecting for themselves in severalty nine stores, with upper stories arranged for a hotel to be owned by them as common property. Held, that the general relation between these parties was that of an ordinary partnership.</p> <p>2. Neither the relation of partners held by three of these parties, nor their position as a committee of the partnership to obtain bids, prevented them from openly and fairly contracting with the others to erect this building.</p> <p>3. But this committee having put in a bid in a fictitious name for an amount which they had learned would be accepted by the association, and, upon its acceptance, having sublet the contract, to strangers at a lower figure, and then procured an assignment of their bid to these strangers, with a secret agreement that the difference should be repaid to them by the builders, it was held that these three partners were liable to their copartners for six-ninths of the sum thus received by them.</p> <p>4. This arrangement “leaked out,” and the other parties, while expressing dissatisfaction with this agreement, continued to pay their proportion of the amounts called for by the building contract. Held, that the injured partners were not thereby estopped from enforcing this claim, nor did their payments operate as a confirmation of the rights secured by the defendants to themselves in the subletting contract.</p>