Baltimore Breweries Co. v. Callahan

Fowler, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The plaintiff sued the defendant corporation to recover damages for the breach of a contract to employ him for one year at a salary of $1,560, payable in weekly installments of thirty dollars each. This contract is in writing, and the controlling question is, whether it is a contract not to be performed within a year, arid if so, whether it sufficiently sets forth a consideration on the part of the plaintiff. But for the ingenious argument of the counsel for defendant we should have had but little, if any, doubt in regard to the correctness of the rulings of the learned Judge below.

He held, and we think correctly, that upon its face the contract was one which could have been performed within a year, or ¹¹¹ rather that it did not appear that it could not be possibly-performed within that time, and that therefore it was not within the fourth section of the Statute of Frauds. This view is in accordance with the great weight of authority, and is supported by the decisions of this Court in the case of Cole v. Singerly, 60 Md. 354 , where it was said that “ the statute will not be applied where the contract can, by any possibility, be fulfilled or completed.within the space of a year — although the parties may have intended its operation should extend through a much longer period.” It appears that the contract sued on in this case was executed on the fifth of September, 1893, and it will appear from an examination of its provisions that it was made between the plaintiff and defendant, that each of them signed, that they both thereby declared that the defendant had employed the plaintiff for the term of one year beginning on the-day of September, 1893, and ending on the.- day of September, 1894, to serve as a solicitor of trade, &c. — that the defendant agreed to pay the plaintiff, as salary for said term of one year, the sum of $1,560. It appears from the testimony of the plaintiff that at the time of the execution of this contract it was thought there was nothing which could prevent his going into the service of the defendant at once, except the fact that he could not then tell at what moment of time the person he had been theretofore serving would release him, and that the date which was left blank depended upon that uncertain or contingent event. If he had been released by his former employer on the day of the signing of the contract with the defendant, he would have filled out the blank by writing in the “ fifth” of September, and the contract would then have clearly been for a year certain, and not within the statute.

In the case of Cole v.