Facts
Organ purchased 111 hogsheads of tobacco (111,000 pounds) from Laidlaw & Co. on February 18, 1815. The purchase was made between 8 and 9am on the same day that news broke that a peace treaty had been accepted between America and Britain, ending the War of 1812 and lifting a naval embargo that had drastically depressed the price of American tobacco by 30 to 50 percent. Organ was aware of the lifting of the embargo because his brother had informed him earlier that morning. Laidlaw was not aware of the news. During the discussion of the contract Organ was asked if he was aware of any reasons for the price to be higher; Organ stayed silent over the news of the embargo lifting. The subsequent rise in tobacco prices after the signing of the contract incurred a large relative loss on the sale, compared to the tobacco's next-day value. Two days later, on the 20th, Laidlaw & Co. repossessed the tobacco by force from Organ. Organ filed suit for breach of contract to regain the tobacco or be awarded damages.
Read more about this topic: Laidlaw V. Organ
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is not an arbitrary “decree of God,” but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“How many facts we have fallen through
And still the old façade glimmers there,
A mirage, but permanent. We must first trick the idea”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)