Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/47

13 LETTERS OF CREDIT 13 insist on a considerable particularity of description before allow- ing promisor to be held as acceptor.^ When, however, the addressee sues, not on the bill seeking to hold the issuer as an acceptor, but on the contract to accept bills drawn under and within the terms of the letter, no more particularity ought to be required than in any other case of offer and acceptance. If there is enough cer- tainty to make a contract there is a cause of action.^ Unhappily the origin of the requirement of particularity in the description of the bills to be drawn has often been overlooked, and in actions for breach of contract to accept, the courts have demanded all the certainty involved in a decree for specific performance, and hence involved also in an action to charge the promisor as acceptor.^ With the relaxation in equity of the strict rule as to certainty, so that it is enough if there is a contract at law which the court is in a position to enforce without making a new contract and without undue hardship,^^ the basis of the doctrine in Coolidge v. Payson is doubtful and more than one court long ago gave it up.*^ At all events it has nothing to do on principle with liability upon a letter of credit in an action for non-a-cceptance or non-payment of drafts drawn in accordance with the terms of the letter.'*^ Letters of credit which might well have been dealt with on the offer theory have sometimes been treated on a theory of guar- I Pet. (U. S.) 264 (1828); Boyce v. Edwards, 4 Pet. (U. S.) iii (1830); Garrettson v. North Atchison Bank, 39 Fed. 163 (1889); Ulster County Bank v. McFarlan, 3 Den. (N. Y.) 553 (1846); First National Bank v. Clark, 61 Md. 400, 406 (1883); Lewis v. Kramer, 3 Md. 265, 289 (1852). rison, 70 Cal. 380, II Pac. 636 (1886); Nelson v. First National Bank, 48 111. 36 (1868); Carnegie v. Morrison, 2 Met. (Mass.) 381 (1841); Bissell v. Lewis, 4 Mich. 450 (1857); Pollock V. Helm, 54 Miss, i (1876); Bank of Montreal :;. Thomas, 16 Ont. 503. In the latter case the action seems to have been brought upon the bill rather than upon the contract to accept it, but questions of pleading were not raised. Northwestern Fertilizing Company, 83 Ga. 356, 9 S. E. 671 (1889); Krakauer v. Chapman, 16 App. Div. 115 (dissenting opinion) 45 N. Y. Supp. 127 (1897). V. The Baltimore Coal Tar and Manufacturing Company, 63 Md. 285 (1884); 3 PoMEROY, Equity, §§ 1400 et seq. (1857). 231 (1842).
 * ^ Coolidge V. Payson, 2 Wheat. (U. S.) 75 (181 7); Schimmelpennich v. Bayard,
 * Franklin Bank of Baltimore v. Lynch, 52 Md. 270, 280 (1879); Lafargue v. Har-
 * ^ State National Bank v. Young, 14 Fed. 889 (1883); Atlanta National Bank v.
 * Jones V. Parker, 163 Mass. 564, 40 N. E. 1044 (1895); Equitable Gas Qompany
 * ' See Nelson v. First National Bank, 48 HI. 36 (1868); Bissell v. Lewis, 4 Mich. 450
 * See the vigorous statement of Story, J., in Russell v. Wiggin, 2 Story (U. S.) 213,