McMillan v. Davis

Opinion by

Head, J.,

The agreement into which the parties entered was in no sense an option. It was a valid binding contract of purchase and sale from which neither party was at liberty to withdraw at his own pleasure. The defendant, having paid a substantial part of the purchase money in cash, and having given negotiable notes for the remainder of it, found in the fact of the delivery of the assignment to the escrow agent his security that when he paid the notes he would be in possession of the property he had purchased. The vendor could in no way have escaped the claim of the defendant to the ownership of the patent as soon as the conditions were complied with: Baum’s Appeal, 113 Pa. 58; Booth v. Williams, 2 W. N. C. 504.

The vendor in turn needed some security that the notes which were to run for a considerable time afterward would be paid, and he found such protection in that portion of the agreement which gave him the privilege of withdrawing the assignment in escrow and reclaiming the possession of it on and after a default on the part of the defendant in his obligation to pay. When the defendant failed to pay the note sued on at maturity, he exercised no right reserved to him in his contract. He simply defaulted in the performance of an obligation enforceable at law. We think it plain that under the agreement he could not predicate of his own default his escape from the stress of an obligation which he had agreed to perform: Galey v. Kellerman, 123 Pa. 491; Wills v. Manufacturers’ Gas Co., 130 Pa. 222; Cape May Real Estate Co. v. Henderson, 42 Pa. Superior Ct. 1.

We are all of the opinion the affidavit filed by the defendant discloses no sound legal defense to the plaintiff’s claim and that the learned court below was therefore right in entering a judgment for the plaintiff.

Judgment affirmed.