ABSTRACT
Hollingham v Head (1858, Court of Common Pleas) This was an action for goods sold and delivered, tried, before Williams J at the last assizes for the county of Sussex, when it appeared that the plaintiff was the agent for the Sussex Farming Society, and attended markets for the purpose of selling a new kind of guano, called ‘Rival Guano’, and that the defendant, a farmer residing at Lindfield, in that county, had purchased a quantity of it, for the price of which this action was brought. The defence was, that this guano was a new kind, which the plaintiff, being anxious to introduce into the market, and in order to induce the defendant to become a purchaser, sold to him at £7 a ton, on condition that if it was not equal to Peruvian guano, the price of which was £14 a ton, the defendant was not to pay for it. With a view to establish this defence, the plaintiff was asked, on cross-examination by the defendant’s counsel, whether he had not sold parcels of this same guano to other persons upon the same condition. The question was objected to by the plaintiff’s counsel, but the learned judge allowed it to be put for the purpose only of pressing the witness’s memory. The plaintiff having denied that he had ever sold any of this guano upon that condition, evidence was tendered as part of the defendant’s case to prove that the plaintiff had done so. This evidence was also objected to by the plaintiff’s counsel, and rejected by the learned judge. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff.
