Recovery of the Purchase Price before Title Has Passed

In an action recently instituted by The General Electric Co. to recover on a contract to manufacture certain machinery for the defendant, which machinery the defendant had refused to accept, the trial court adopted the contract price as the measure of damages. The upper court approved this measure of damages, rejecting the argument that the measure should have been the difference between the market value and the contract price, and dismissed, as no longer appropriate to modern conditions, the decisions in Bement v. Smith, 15 Wend. (N. Y.) 493, and Shawhan v. Van Nest. 25 Oh. St. 490. The court recognized, however, that these decisions had been sound when rendered. As they have frequently been referred to as anomalous rulings, it may be interesting to consider the effect upon them of this recent decision. Manhattan City, etc., Ry. Co. v. General Electric Co., 226 Fed. 173