Body-Steffner Co. v. Flotill Products, Inc.

Defendant appeals from a judgment for damages rendered against it for failure to deliver certain canned tomatoes and tomato paste pursuant to six written contracts entered into between plaintiff and defendant. In five of the six contracts a standard form of printed contract of purchase and sale adopted by the Canners League of California and approved by the National-American Wholesale Grocers’ Association was used.

By typewritten reference in the body of each of these five contracts an attached multigraphed sheet dealing with certain contingencies that might arise out of the war emergency was made a part of the contract. In the discussion which follows we feel justified in treating this multigraphed sheet as a general amendment of the printed form designed to meet certain unusual trade conditions created by the fact of our country being in a state of war, and hence no different in legal effect than if the provisions of the multigraphed sheet had been printed in the body of a revised printed form. In the two contracts which were earliest in time (dated May 23 and June 3, 1941, respectively) into the printed form in the blank provided for the insertion of the buyer’s name were…