Ward

The plaintiff, James Ward, was, in 1914, conducting a prune orchard in Marin County. He shipped three pickings, consisting of 13,175 pounds of prunes, to San Francisco, arriving on the nineteenth day of September, 1914. The prunes were delivered to the defendant, Otzen Packing Company, for final processing and packing in boxes. When so processed and packed they aggregated some 527 boxes, which were then stored in the wareroom of the defendant, where they remained from the month of October, 1914, to the latter part of January, 1915, when they were examined and found to be moldy, sugared, and in poor condition. The entire lot of prunes was finally sold at three cents per pound, with the exception of 112 pounds, which sold for one cent per pound. The market price at that time was six cents per pound.

The plaintiff thereupon brought suit against the defendant corporation, charging that the defendant had negligently warehoused the prunes and claiming damage in the amount of five hundred dollars. The court found that the allegations of negligence were true and that plaintiff was thereby-damaged in the sum of five hundred dollars, minus $27.31, the amount of defendant’s counterclaim for…