Miller v. San Francisco Church Extension Society of Methodist Episcopal Church

This is an appeal by the defendants from a judgment of damages arising out of a transaction in ^ which the plaintiffs, as architects, were employed. The record is very long. The facts are few and may be briefly stated.

In the conflagration of 1906 in San Francisco many churches were burned, and among others the church buildings then occupied by the congregation of each appellant except San Francisco Church Extension Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The latter corporation was an auxiliary organization of the denomination but never conducted a church. The congregation of each church desired the construction of a place of worship that it might call “home”. The congregations, as such, and their several members commenced to discuss ways and means. Later; on December 1, 1925, the several congregations formed a joint organization and appointed members of the Downtown Church Committee with authority to act but that it should act through the San Francisco Church Extension Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as their trustee of the enterprise. Still later the Downtown Church Committee authorized the Society to enter into and it did enter into a contract with the plaintiffs.…