DISCOUNT MUST BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONTRACT.
Question.—We sold to a concern and the terms of sale were “2 per cent. discount for cash in ten days or sixty days net.” The buyer in his settlements has taken fifteen to twenty days’ time and has deducted 2 per cent. discount and has added 6 per cent. per annum for the extra days beyond ten. We claim that this settlement is entirely wrong, and if he wishes the discount in full he must send a check within ten days after the date of the bill.
Reply: No debtor is to be excused from paying the full amount of his debt except in strict accordance with some provision to that effect in his contract. Here is a debtor who would have been bound to pay the full amount immediately if there had been no special provision to the contrary. Any such provision as there may be is a kind of grace to him and it is not to be extended beyond the strict terms in which it is expressed. He may take 2 per cent. off if he pays at any time within ten days. When the ten days are passed the contract stands precisely as if it had said nothing at all about discount for payment within ten days. This debtor had no right to deduct the 2 per cent. He is trying to take an advantage which his contract does not give him. If he were asked to point out a clause in the contract giving him a right to take off the discount later than the tenth day, of course, he could not do it.
Opinion No. 69.