Michigan Reports (Volume 47); Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Michigan (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 47 294; Thomas Mckenzie v. John Sykes. 140 3211 Construction?Written contracts and oral negotiation. The meaning of written contracts must be determined by the court, but the effect of oral negotiations and understandings must be determined by the jury as matter of fact. If therefore one party say to another " Go on and cultivate my farm and raise crops and I will do what is right by you," the court cannot instruct the jury that by this he means " Go on and I will do what is right by you in respect to charges," instead of that he would do what is right in other way or manner. The jury must determine both what is said and what is meant by it. Error to Ionia. Submitted Oct. 25. Decided Jan. 5. Replevin. Defendant brings error. Reversed. A. A. Ellis for plaintiff in error. A. B. Morse for defendant in error. Cooley, J. This is an action of replevin for a quantity of wheat which was raised by Sykes on the land of McKen- zie, who is his father-in-law, while the parties were living- together upon it. The chief controversy concerns the bargain under which the wheat was raised. Both of the parties, and also their wives, were sworn and examined as witnesses. The testimony of Sykes tended to- show that after his marriage with McKenzie's daughter in September, 1878, it was talked over between himself and McKenzie that he should live in the house with McKenzie, work the farm and raise what he could off it, let McKenzie have his living and his stock kept, and Sykes have the remainder; that under this arrangement he went on and sowed winter wheat, raised and harvested 701 bushels, drew off a part of it, when he was forbidden by McKenzie to take the remainder and therefore replevied it. He admitted that McKenzie assisted him somewhat in the work. Mrs. Sykes'stestimony supp...