Brookings Lumber & Box Co. v. Manufacturers' Automatic Sprinkler Co.

We will treat this as an appeal from the judgment and from an order denying plaintiff’s motion for a new trial, although respondents contend that no efficient appeal was made from the order, owing to the failure of plaintiff to serve them with proper notice.

Plaintiff entered into a written contract on July 7, 1910, with the Manufacturers’ Automatic Sprinkler Company, whereby the latter agreed for a certain consideration to install in the former’s box factory an improved “wet-pipe” system of automatic sprinklers and fire-extinguishing apparatus. On September 22, 1910, and while the sprinkler company was putting in the pipes for the installation of said system, a fire broke out in the box factory and destroyed it. The plaintiff corporation sued for fifteen thousand dollars damages alleging that when the fire occurred the work was being done in a dilatory manner; that the manufacturers’ company had agreed to install the system within three weeks following July 10, 1910; and that if this promise had been kept, or if within a reasonable time the work had been completed, the fire would have been extinguished and plaintiff’s loss prevented. The Automatic Sprinkler Company of America is…