Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/506

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480
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

credit for use on said farm, guaranteed in writing the grocery bill contracted for groceries used thereon.” Brandenburg, for defense, in effect admits the guaranty, but denies that plaintiff extended the credit upon the strength thereof. Could a court, under those circumstances, be expected to rule that there was no guaranty simply because the language used might more naturally be differently construed? When the court finally charged the jury 1t had before it, not only the pleadings but the testimony of Mr. Brandenburg, wherein he says: “I never knew the guaranty was used until Mr. Parlin came tome. * * * Ttold him we had modified the terms of the guaranty as he showed it to me at that time to cover supplies, verbally.” And speaking of another merchant to whom the Halls had applied for groceries, he said: “I told him to have them come in and leave the written guaranty.” The court also knew that on the day of the date of said guaranty Mr. Brandenburg had contracted to sell to Mrs. Hall a section of land, to be paid for out of the crops to be raised thereon by Mrs. Hall; that this guaranty was given to insure her ability to raise such crops; that there was no claim by either party that there was any guaranty or agreement to guaranty other than or different from the contract set out in the complaint; that this contract, which the majority opinion says was simply a promise on her part to pay interest, was delivered to and left in the possession of Mrs. Hall, to be used by her whenever she required the goods as therein specified. Under these circumstances I think the trial court committed no error in holding that Mr. Brandenburg, when he signed said contract, intended to bind himself as guarantor to any person who should furnish the goods in reliance upon and in accordance with the terms of said contract, and that he knew that Mrs. Hall, in receiving the contract, so understood it. Our statute says (Comp. Laws, § 3564): “If the terms of a promise are in any respect ambiguous or uncertain, it must be interpreted in the sense in which the promisor believed, at the time of making it, that the promisee understood it.” The next section reads: “ Particular clauses of a contract are subordinate to its general intent.” Section 3568 reads: “Words in a contract, which are wholly inconsistent with its