United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Advance-Rumely Thresher Co., Inc. v. Jackson, 287 U.S. 283 (1932)

Advance-Rumely Thresher Co., Inc. v. Jackson

No. 33

Argued November 10, 1932

Decided December 5, 1932

287 U.S. 283

Syllabus

1. In determining the validity of a legislative declaration that a contract is contrary to public policy, regard is to be had to the general rule that competent persons shall have the utmost liberty of contracting and that it is only where enforcement conflicts with dominant public interests that one who has had the benefit of performance by the other party to a contract will be permitted to avoid his own promise. P. 287 U. S. 288.

2. Upon the sale of a machine for cutting and threshing the buyer's grain in a single operation, there is an implied warranty under the Uniform Sales Act, adopted in North Dakota, that the machine is reasonably fit for that purpose. P. 287 U. S. 288.

3. A North Dakota statute provides that the purchaser of harvesting or threshing machinery for his own use shall have a reasonable time after delivery for inspecting and testing it, and that, if it does not prove to be reasonably fit for the purposes for which it was purchased, he may rescind. It further declares any agreement contrary to its provisions to be against public policy and void, thus preventing waiver of the warranty of fitness. In a case involving the sale of a harvesting and threshing machine it is held, in view of conditions in the state to which the statute was addressed, that it does not violate the due process or the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 287 U. S. 289-292.

62 N.D. 143, 241 N.W. 722, affirmed.

Appeal from a judgment affirming a judgment against the thresher company, entered upon demurrer to it answer, in a suit against it to cancel promissory notes following the rescission of a contract of sale.

Page 287 U. S. 286