Summary
In Hagerty v. Nashua Lock Co., 62 N.H. 576, 577, the court say, — "The question of justice is not limited to a month, or to the damages for which the defendants can maintain an action against him.
Summary of this case from Stack v. CavanaughOpinion
Decided June, 1883.
When a minor repudiates his contract to work for two years, after working five months and being paid for four months, he can recover no more than is equitably due. What he received is deducted from the value of his work.
ASSUMPSIT. Facts found by the court. The plaintiff is a minor. He engaged to work for the defendants two years, and to learn the trade of a moulder. The defendants agreed to pay him $1.00 a day for the first quarter of the two years, $1.17 for the second quarter, $1.34 for the third quarter, and $1.50 for the fourth quarter. They were to retain ten cents for each day's work until the end of the two years. If he voluntarily left their employment in violation of the agreement, he was to forfeit the amount retained, and all wages due when he left. No memorandum of the contract was signed by or for him. At the end of five months he left in violation of the agreement. He was paid, according to the agreement, at the end of each of the first four months, and the payments were more than he earned in those months. During the fifth month he earned ninety cents a day. If the value of his services during the five months, and the payments made, are taken into account, he is entitled to recover $16. If there can be no deduction on account of over-payments, the sum due him is $32.50.
G. B. French, for the plaintiff.
J. B. Fassett, for the defendants.
On a quantum meruit the plaintiff demands what he is justly entitled to. The contract which he repudiated, and on which four payments had been made, was an entire one for two years' work. He can recover no more than is equitably due; and equity considers the whole transaction, including the fact that during the first four months he received more than he earned. The question of justice is not limited to a month, or to the damages for which the defendants can maintain an action against him. The law of the case is no more inconsistent with moral right than his contractual disability requires. Hall v. Butterfield, 59 N.H. 354; Bartlett v. Bailey, 59 N.H. 408.
Judgment for the plaintiff for $16.
STANLEY, J., did not sit: the others concurred.