Harris

Plaintiff is a nonprofit cooperative marketing association, organized in 1921 under the laws of the state of California. From the beginning the defendant John Harris was a member of the association and, with his fellow-members, had signed a marketing agreement with the association whereby he sold to the association, to be marketed for the benefit of himself, all of the peaches to be grown by him on a twenty-acre orchard for the next fourteen years.

During the years 1922 and 1923 defendant’s yearly crop was delivered and marketed under the terms of the marketing agreement. But during the season of 1924 the defendant sold his crop to other parties and failed to deliver any part of it to the association. Upon suit being brought by the association to recover the punitory damages provided for in the agreement, the defendant John Harris set up as a defense his claim that there was an anticipatory breach of the marketing agreement on the part of the association. Upon the trial of the case before the court, sitting without a jury, the court found in accordance with the defendant’s claim of an anticipatory breach that “during the summer of 1924, about the month of June, and shortly before…