Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/565

 BCHMIDT V. STEAM-SHIP PENNSTLVANU. 551 �lost. He rejected the goods, as he had a right to do, and the market had fallen bo that a loss, which is the measure of the damage, had been suffered."* �The district judge died before any assessment of damages was made, but as he had indicated during the argument that, in his opinion, the measure of damage shoald be the differ- ence between the contract priee with Keene and the market value on Pebruary 19, 1878, the date of the offer to deliver, the parties, by agreement, entered a pro forma assessment of damages at $1,090.51. Both parties then appealed to the circuit court. �E. G. Platt and Samuel Dickson, for libellant. �Morton P. Henry, for respondent. �McKennan, C, J. The opinion of the late district judge, ■who decided this cause, so concisely and aocurately states the law by which it must be governed, that I do not propose to add anything to it. �The ordinary measure of damages between vendor and vendee, for breach of a contract for the sale of goods, is the difference between the contract price and the market price at the time and place of delivery, for the reason that this is the actual loss sustained by the vendee. But here the respondent was in possession of the libellant's goods, which were wrong- fully withheld from him, whereby he was disabled from per- forming a contract for the sale of them, and the sale of them was defeated. Of this sale the respondent was duly notified, when a delivery of the goods was demanded, and by its refusai to deliver them took the risk of a renunciation of the purchase by the complainant's vendee. Whatever sum the complain- ant would have realized by this contract in excess of the mar- ket price of the goods at the time of their delivery, when he had the power to dispose of them, is clearly the amount of his actual loss which was caused by the respondent's act. The goods were withheld from the eomplainant until the fifth of Mareh, 1878, and for the difference between their market priee at that time and the price for which they had been sold �*For a report of the case in fuU, with. arguments of counsel, ses 7 �Weekly Notes, 98. ����