DARLING V. AURORA PACKING CO. LTD. 7/1927

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DARLING

DARLING v. AURORA PACKING CO. LTD.

JUDGMENT. ISAACS J.

The ultimate question comes to this:=- Did the aurora Packing Company promise the appellant that it would take up and "finalise", that is, carry on to completion, the agency undertaking which the MeClure Company hed entered upon and partly performed, or did it promise an entirely separate and distinct agency undertaking, merely to sell and account for such portion of the appellant's fruit delivered to the McClure company as remained unsolé on August 26th 1924, leaving the McClure company to account to the appellant for all transactions up to the point of severance?

The question has been answered in favour of the appellant, that is in the first alternative, by the Stipendiary Magistrate and Justices, and in favour of the respondent - = the second alternative - - by the learned Judges of the Supreme Court, though not altogether for the same reasons.

The matter has been very ably argued on both sides on this appeal.

It is with regret I find myself after the best consideration I have been able to bring to the case, at variance with opinions, all of which I sincerely respect. I therefore feel bound to express my own reasons with somewhat more detailed references than I could wish to those portions of the correspondence that have led me to the conclusion that the primary decision on what after all is as to how business men in the circumstances would read business letters, was correct.

By general assent the matter depends on the proper censtructio: to be placed on some written business communications. It is further conceded that in order to arrive at the sense in which the parties understood, or must be taken to have understood, those communications, what are oalled the surrounding circumstances must be first ascertained. Words are always to be construed secundum