Borden v. Richmond & Danville Railroad , 113 N.C. 570 ( 1893 )

Buiíwell, J.:

It is conceded that the local agent of the defendant at Goldsboro made a written offer to ship for the plaintiff five hundred bales of cotton to Liverpool in November, 1891, and that the said agent was authorized to make such a proposal on the part of the defendant, and that plaintiff at once accepted this offer, his acceptance being also in writing. Furthermore, it seems to be conceded that the said agent plainly and unequivocally expressed what he understood to be the price to be charged by the defendant company for the transportation of the cotton, and there was no misunderstanding between the plaintiff and the agent as to any of the terms of the alleged contract.

Now it is evident that, if the agent is considered, not as the mere mouthpiece of the defendant corporation, through whom the intention of its higher officers in this matter was to be simply communicated to the plaintiff, but as its authorized contracting agent — its alter ego in this affair — there was no error or mistake at all, much less one that would prevent the written proposal and its written acceptance from constituting a valid contract, by the plain terms of which each party would be bound. In this view of the matter there was no variance between the intention of the defendant and the expression of that intention. The contracting agent expressed in unequivocal language exactly what he intended to express. The plaintiff accepted the offer thus made to him. The defendant cannot escape liability on this contract by asserting that its agent would not have so conducted himself if he had known at that time what he was afterwards informed of. And it might well be insisted on the part of the plaintiff that, in the absence of notice'to the contrary, he had a right to assume that that agent had power to act for his principal in this matter, and that defendant should not be allowed to dispute that authority.

Passing by that question and assuming, for the sake of argument, that the local agent at Goldsboro was the mere mouthpiece or spokesman of the defendant in this matter, and that plaintiff knew this fact, then we have here a variance between the intention of the proposer (the defendant) and the expression of that intention. There was an error in the expression of the defendant’s intention, but that error was unknown to the plaintiff. He had no good reason to suspect that the writing submitted to him did not correctly express the intention of the defendant. He did not “snap up” an offer which he knew or suspected was erroneously expressed. He merely accepted a plainly expressed proposition. In the view of the matter we are now taking, the question, then, is: If, in the expression of the intention of one of the parties to an alleged contract, there is error, and that error is unknown to and unsuspected by the other party, is that which was so expressed by the one party and agreed to by the other a valid and binding contract, which the party not in error may enforce? The law is well settled, says Mr. Lawson in his work on contracts, § 206, that a man is bound by an agreement to which he has expressed his assent in unequivocal terms, uninfluenced by falsehood, violence or oppression, and it judges of an agreement between two persons exclusively from those expressions of their intention which are communicated between them. And Wharton, in his work on the same subject, §196, quotes from Tamplin v. James, L. R., 15 Ch. Div., 215, this general rule, as he denominates it: “ Where there has been no misrepresentation, and where there is no ambiguity in the terms of the contract, the defendant cannot be allowed to evade the performance of it by the simple statement that he has made a mistake. But,” he adds, “where a proposal evidently contains a mistake, an acceptor, by snapping at it, will not be permitted to take advantage of the mistake.” In section 202a he announces the rule thus: “A unilateral mistake of expression of one party cannot be set up by him as a ground for rescinding a contract or for resisting its enforcement, when his language was accepted by the other party in its natural sense. But when the blunder made by the proposer is obvious, an acceptor will not be allowed, by catching it up, to take an unfair advantage.” An essential bilateral error as to the nature of a contract avoids it, if based upon such error, but a unilateral error will not have that effect. Bishop on Contracts, §§ 701 and 702. “ It would open the door to fraud if such a defence was to be allowed. It is said that it is hard to hold a man to a bargain entered into under a mistake, but we must consider the hardship on the other side.” Tamplin v. James, supra. We must consider also that “one of the remarkable tendencies of the English Common Law upon all subjects of a general nature is to aim at practical good rather than theoretical perfection, and to seek.less to administer justice in all possible cases than to furnish rules which shall secure it in the common course of human business.” 1 Story E. Jur., § 111.

We think, therefore, that all evidence in regard to plaintiff’s purchase of the cotton was irrelevant. He had a valid contract for its shipment at 69J cents. His rights thereunder could not be affected by a notice that the defendant’s agent had been misinformed, as we have seen.

Plence, we need not consider the exception taken by the defendant to the admission or exclusion of evidence relating to that part of the controvers}'. Under the law as we hold it to be, it being admitted that the plaintiff had been required to pay more than the contract price for the shipment of his cotton, he was entitled, as his Honor held, to recover the difference between the sum so paid and the contract price.

Affirmed.