Smithson v. United States Telegraph Co.

Nelson, J., delivered the opinion of the court. At the argument of this cause, after hearing the counsel for the appellant, the court declined to hear the appellee’s counsel, and announced as the opinion of a majority of the court, that the motion to dismiss the appeal ought to prevail, and passed an order accordingly. The whole court was also of opinion that the account filed in the cause, upon which the suit was brought, was not a debt within the purview of Art. 4, secs. 166-169 of the Code of Public Local Laws of the City of Baltimore. We now proceed to state more fully the grounds of that opinion.

The judgment rendered by the court below was a mere interlocutory judgment, leaving the case upon the docket for final trial and adjudication as it stood before the judgment ¹⁶⁶ complained of, and determining nothing final between the parties. It is well settled that no appeal can be prosecuted in this court, until a final decision has been had in the court below, which concludes the rights of the parties to the action; the decision in this case certainly did not do so, for the case still stands for trial on the docket of the court below. In regard to the second question, we regard the plaintiffs' claim as unliquidated damages, and not embraced within the meaning of the sections of the Code referred to. Sec. 168, we think, makes it clear that the three preceding sections, referred to on the plaintiffs’ brief, relate only to an ascertained amount of liquidated indebtedness, which the plaintiff can properl}'- and safely swear the defendant owes *to him.

Is this such a claim? Is the claim in this case an ascertained amount of liquidated indebtedness to which a plaintiff can properly swear ? We think it is not. The rule upon the subject of liquidated and unliquidated damages we take to be, that where a precise sum for damages is not agreed upon, and is not of the essence of the contract between the parties, the quantum of damages isunliquidated, and it is for a jury to assess them; but where the precise sum has been fixed and agreed upon by the parties, that sum is the ascertained and liquidated damages, and the jury must assess that amount, no more and no less.

The case before us, we think, is embraced in the first branch of the rule, the case of the sale of flour, Wilson v. Wilson, 8 Gill, 192 , is within the second branch. In the case before us, there were no damages agreed upon between the parties, there was not even a penalty named, and the only penalty for a breach of the contract, or for negligence in its performance, was what the law would raise and a jury assess according to the circumstances of the case. In Wilson v. Wilson, supra, the amount of the damages was fixed by the contract; or what was the same thing the contract furnished a standard by which they could be certainly ascertained. The contract was, that Tinsley & Co. were to guarantee the inspection of the flour which they were to deliver, and if it would not pass superfine, then Wilson was to furnish them with the