May 1, 1900, 1 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
739 
COCONUTS AND NATIVE DEALEES. 
Judgment of the Ceylon Supreme Court, 
Messrs. Justices Lawrie and Browne delivered 
judgment on Maveli 16th, in the case in v^liich 
Messrs. William Birch Junior & Co., Ltd., of Man- 
chester, sued I. L. M. H. Mohaniadn Mohideen of 
the Pettah. The plaintiff's alleged that the Je- 
fendant consigned to them 625 bags of coconuts and 
drew on them a bill of exchange for £150. The 
coeonuts had to be sold at a loss, and tlie plaint- 
iffs sued the defendant for the ref>overy of 
£225—15—10 or its equivalent E3,427 0;? due to 
them on this consignuicnt. In defence the de- 
fendant pleaded that he suffered the loss owing 
to the neglect of tlie plaintifts, and admitted hislia- 
bility t» a sum of only £36—17—9. Mr. Dias, A . D J. , 
held that the loss was due to the plaintiffs' neglect, 
and condemned them in costs, giving them judg- 
ment only for the amount admitted. Their lord- 
ships gave judgment for the plaintiffs as follows : — 
Mr. Justice Lawrib : — The defendant consigned a. 
quantity of coconuts to the plaintiffs, a firm of mer- 
chants in England. Rougtily speaking the agreement 
was that the plaintiffs shoald honour a draft for | of tha 
invoice price, that they should do their beat to sell the 
nuts at a profit, that they should be paid brokerage 
and storage &a. and that they should be remunerated 
for their trouble ; but as I read the agreement the con- 
Bignora should bear the loss if the market fell or the 
ftrticlea did not find a purchaser. The speculation 
ended in a loss. The plaintiffs are out of pocket and 
they brought this action for payment. The defence is 
that the loss was caused by the neglect or want of skill 
or misconduct of the plaintiffs ; that the plaintiffs 
ought to have sold the ooconnts immediately or at 
least shortly after their arrival tor 4s. per 100, They 
kept the consignment. The market did not rise for 
months and then so slightly as not to make up for the 
deterioration of the nuts. That is, fresh nuts w«re 
■aleable at 4s. per 100 in December and though tha 
price of fresh nuts rose in June or July to 53. per 100, 
the price of stale nuts (as these had then become) was 
hardly 43. and that the price obtained after io many 
months keeping was much the same as could have 
been got when they first arrived. The warehouse 
and other charges had accumulated, so there was a 
greater loss than if they had been sold for 4s. in 
December. Men are wise after the event and wish 
they sold when the market was higher, or bought 
when the market was lower. The defendant valued 
the coconuts at 8s. per 100. That estimate may have 
been justified by the prices quoted in September ba- 
fore the coconuts were shipped from Geylon ; but 
it is clear that the high price (Ss.) induced many from 
the East and from the West to import nuts to 
England, that the market was glutted, the prices 
fell and 8s. per 100 could not be got after the 
nuts arrived. The defendant wrote to the plaintiffs 
to sell, but they did not say what sacrifice they were 
willing to endure ; ihey did not say sell for less than 
8s. If the letters implied that they would t&ke a 
less price, they did not suggest that they would take 
half the value stated in the invoice. In my opinion 
the plaintiffs did not neglect the defendant's interest. 
At first, perhaps they were too sanguine as to a 
rise in the price. In January they showed they 
were not sanguine and they wished to bring the 
transaction to a close and they sent an account 
and drew on the defendant. They showed that at 
the prices obtainable there would be a loss. They 
asked to be relieved of the business end they 
were willing to transfer the account. An attempt 
WBB made to hand it over to Mr. Scrutton who 
did not agree to take the consignment over. Finally 
the plaintiff said that if the defendant did not 
make other arrangements they would sell for any 
price they could get. The defendant did not wire 
' to prevent this. This speculation in oooonuta 
valued at double their worth was bound to end in 
loss which the defendants have to meefct I would set 
aside and give judgment for the plamtitfa with costs. 
Mr, Justice Bbowne :— It appears to me that 
the learned Additional District Judge in declining 
to discuss in detail the evideuco with regard to tha 
state Qf the London Market for coconuts from Nov. 
1896, when this shipment anived, until May-June 
1897, when they were sold, and in paying no atten- 
tion whatever (so far as I can see) to the fact that 
from about the 2'2nd February until the 4th or 5th 
March, the defendant had placed the disposal of 
the shipment with another firm, has omitted matters 
of serious import in the coiioideration of whether or 
not the plaintiffs had failed in nny duty or obliga- 
tion by them to the defendant. Tha defendant cer- 
tainly did not put any limit upon the price for 
which they should be sold in merely invoicing the 
nuts as at Ss per 100. It is to bo iiofced, however, 
as to this consignmentthat the advice thereof preceded 
their arrival by only a few days, and that the shipment 
vvas in the less attractive forms of mixed unspecified 
sizes, instead of so many bags each of the siz^s 
known in the trade as one, tv/o and three, the 
first of which may have its subdivisions of large, 
extra large, and extra selected. Even had he 
therefore directed or had prtaiutiffs' broker desired to 
effect sales " to arrive " or " afloat,'' I find no 
reason to believe that such a sale would have been 
found easily practicable. The evidence as to the market 
rates shews me that after prices of 7s in Ocober andSs in 
November there wera such heavy stocks in London in 
December in readiness forthe first of the four festivals, 
or festive seasons specified as those, when trade is 
most bri.sk, viz : Christmas, E aster, Whitsuntide, and 
August. That the highest price here proved to hav« 
been possibly obtainable in December sale would 
have been 4a 6d— 5s 3d . but that practically there 
were no offers when these and other parcels wer« 
offered on 9, 11, 16, and 18 December, the nnt« 
having been landed on 5th December, and that it 
must be taken that 4s— 4s 9d was the best price 
obtainable before their arrival. The result to defendant 
of any sals that would have been effected then at 
4s is shewn by plaintiffs' ptv foi-ma account of 14th 
January; it would have placed in plaintiffs' hands 
£17 I6s 7s as against a draft for £150 which defendant 
had drawn against the shipment and plaintiffs had 
duly honoured. In spite of their having been offered 
at those 4 sales by a leading broker in the trade in 
December within a fortnight after arrival, the Dis- 
trict Judge has held that "plaintiffs do not appear 
to have taken any steps whatever to dispose of 
them," and suggests that if on their arrival the price 
was only 4s the plaintiffs should not have honoured 
the defendant's draft. The consequence ot that 
would probably have been that the Bank which 
bought the draft would either have simply redrawn 
upon defendant for the amount and let the nuts b« 
sold to pay freight, or else have sold them with 
possibly a worse result than the pro forma account es- 
timated, and in either case the defendaut-consigaor 
would have had no opportunity of seeing whether K 
less disastrous result could be arrived at ere he " out 
his loss." When their broker reported to plaintiff's on 
the 4th January that there were no offers, were plain- 
tiffs wrong in writing defendant and giving him a 
chance to make other arrangements ? Or should th«j 
have sold at that loss ? His letters to them of and 
after 23i'd December, to efi'ect speedy sales, had not 
then arrived, and they stood to lose about £130 upon 
this first venture of their new client, and had to keep 
a prudent watch over their own interests. Plaintiffs' 
manager says " it was unquestionably my duty not to 
sell in that state of the market," and inFrazer b. Van* 
derspaar Withers J., remarked, in the absence of 
authorities on the point, looking at the question fiora 
a common sense point of viev/ :— " If a factor has the 
invoice prices before him and he finds that he can 
only put the consignment on the market 
for a price very considerably below tha 
invoice price, it might be argued thnt he should 
communicate the fact to his principal who would 
either instruct him to sell for whatever ^ price be 
92 
