Superior Court of Fresno County

Procedural Posture

Plaintiff recipient sought review of the judgment from the Superior Court of Fresno County (California), which sustained defendant telegraph company's demurrer to the recipient's complaint seeking to recover for the amount the recipient would have received under an employment contract had the telegraph company delivered the telegram. The recipient also challenged the dismissal of his complaint.

Overview: 11364 hs

Upon receiving payment from the baseball club, the telegraph company agreed to deliver to the recipient, a well-known pitcher, a telegram inquiring whether the recipient was interested in joining the club. The recipient never received the telegram. As a result of the telegraph company's alleged negligence, the pitcher was employed at a later date at a lesser salary. The recipient brought an action to recover the amount he would have received had he timely received and responded to the baseball club's telegram. The trial court dismissed the recipient's complaint. On appeal, the court held that the recipient was not entitled to recover any sum on the face of his complaint. In construing the language of the telegram, the court found that the telegram was merely an inquiry into whether the recipient would accept employment. Thus, the telegraph company's nondelivery could not be considered as the proximate cause of the recipient's failure to obtain the employment at the higher salary. Moreover, the telegraph company was not liable because the message did not impart to the telegraph company any information as to a meaning other than the one set forth by the actual words.

Outcome

The court affirmed the trial court's sustaining of the telegraph company's demurrer and the trial court's dismissal of the recipient's complaint.

Overview

The lessee contended that the late fee was punitive in nature and not a good faith estimate of the damages likely to be suffered by the lessor in the case of a late payment. The lessor countered that the late fee was presumptively valid under Cal. Civ. Code § 1671. The trial court found for the lessor. On appeal, the court reversed. The court stated that for liquidated damages to be valid under § 1671(d), it had to be impracticable or extremely difficult to fix the actual damage. Additionally, the amount of liquidated damages had to represent the result of a reasonable endeavor by the parties to estimate a fair average compensation for any loss that may be sustained.

I'm Anne Tyner. I provide guest post service