Havens v. A. J. Reach Co.

⁴⁸² Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The plaintiff brought this suit against the defendant in the Circuit Court for Cecil County, to recover a balance of about forty-one hundred dollars, alleged to be due the plaintiff for work and labor done by it for the defendant in spinning certain yarn, in the plaintiff's mill, at Elkton, Maryland, under an oral contract between the parties. The plaintiff is a corporation of the State of Pennsylvania,' having its principal place of business in the City of Philadelphia. The defendant is an individual person, trading as Downingtown Woolen Mills, and having his main place of business at Downingtown, in the State of Pennsylvania, and also a mill at Elkton, Cecil County, Md. The suit is in assumpsit, and the declaration in part avers that, on or about the 8th day of August, 1919, the defendant entered into an oral contract with the plaintiff, whereby the plaintiff agreed to spin fbr the defendant fifteen thousand pounds cut cashmere yarn, at its mill in Elkton, Maryland, from raw stock to be furnished by the defendant at a fixed compensation of thirty-two cents per pound, the yarn to be wound on cops to be supplied by defendant; that the plaintiff actually spun more than ten thousand pounds of yarn under the contract, and shipped to the order of the defendant over nine thousand pounds thereof, but the defendant subsequently notified the plaintiff to discontinue the spinning of the remaining part of the fifteen thousand pounds of yarn stated in the contract, and also refused to furnish the plaintiff with sufficient pounds of material or of raw stock to complete the contract.

The declaration then avers that there is due and owing to the plaintiff by the defendant the sum of three thousand three hundred twenty dollars for the yarn actually spun and delivered, and also the sum of six hundred and ninety-three dollars as profit, which the plaintiff would have made on the remaining- four thousand six hundred twenty-two pounds of .yarn, which the plaintiff was prevented from ⁴⁸³ earning because of the wrongful breach of the contract by the defendant. The defendant, in addition to his denial of the plaintiff’s claim, pleaded the breach’of the contract by the plaintiff, and made a counter-claim for the sum of $29,417.85 for its breach by the plaintiff in negligently, unskilfully and improperly mixing the stocks and spinning the yarn, whereby the yarn produced was not of the kind and quality which plaintiff agreed to spin from the materials furnished by the defendant, according to the contract. At the trial of the case, the verdict and judgment were in favor of the plaintiff, for the sum of $4,100.62, and from that judgment this appeal has been taken. The record contains eight exceptions, seven of which relate to the rulings of the court on questions of evidence and one to its rulings on the prayers.

As the action and ruling of the court upon the prayers presents the principal questions in the case, it will he considered by us before passing upon the rulings of the court upon the admissibility of evidence. The plaintiff’s first and second prayers were granted and its third, fourth, fifth and sixth prayers were rejected. The defendant offered seven prayers, of which five were granted and two were rejected. The court gave an instruction of its