Goss

Action for the return of the purchase price paid for certain hay which was destroyed by fire prior to actual delivery. The facts are as follows:

Hackfeld & Company, Limited, a corporation, engaged in the export business (predecessor of plaintiff herein), and defendants Chas E. Goss & Son, a corporation, hay dealers of San Francisco, entered into a contract for the sale and purchase of some 800 tons of double-compressed No. 1 wheat hay at the price of $31 per ton.

Defendants owned a warehouse in San Francisco, and bought hay from the growers and resold the same to local buyers and also to wholesalers and exporters. As a part of their export business in handling hay they owned certain high-power presses, which were used for the rebaling or double-compressing of hay, the process being to unbale and break up the ordinary size bales as received from the growers, and then Decompress or rebale the same under high compression, thereby reducing the size of each bale about one-half.

The object of this change was to permit of the export shipment of a greater quantity in a given sized space for the purpose of economy in shipment. Other than the decreasing of the size of the bales, nothing…