MATERIALS
MATERIALS. Everything of which anything is made.
2. When materials are furnished to a workman he is bound to use them according to his contract, as a tailor is bound to employ the cloth I furnish him with, to make me a coat that shall fit me, for if he so make it that I cannot wear it, it is not a proper employment of the materials. But if the undertaker use ordinary skill and care, he will not be responsible, although the mate-rials may be injured; as, if a gem be delivered to a jeweler, and it is broken without any unskilfulness, negligence or rashness of the artisan, he will not be liable. Poth. Louage, n. 428.
3. The workman is to use ordinary diligence in the care of the materials entrusted with him, or to exercise that caution which a prudent man takes of his own affairs, and he is also bound to preserve them from any unexpected danger to which they may be exposed. 1 Gow. R. 30; 1 Camp. 138.
4. When there is no special contract between the parties, and the materials perish while in the possession of the workman or undertaker, without his default, either by inevitable casualty, by internal defect, by superior force, by robbery or by any peril not guarded against by ordinary diligence, he is not responsible. This is the case only when the material belongs to the em-ployer and the workman only undertakes to put his work upon it. But a distinction must be observed in the case when the employer has engaged a workman to make him an article out of his own materials, for in that case the employer has no property in it, until the work be completed, and the article be deli-vered to him; if, in the mean time, the thing perishes, it is the loss of the workman, who is wholly its owner, according to the maxim res perit domino. In the former case the employer is the owner; in the latter the workman; in the first case it is a bailment, in the second a sale of the thing in futuro. Domat. B. 1, t. 4, 7, n. 3; Id. B. 1, t. 4, 8, n. 10.
5. Another distinction must be made in the case when the thing given by the employer was to become the property of the workman, and an article was to be made out of similar materials, and before its completion it perished. In this case the title to the thing having passed to the workman, the loss must be his. 1 Blackf. 353; 7 Cowen, 752, 756, note; 21 Wend. 85; 3 Mason, 478; Dig. 19, 2, 31; 1 Bouv. Inst. 1006-7.
6. In some of the states by their laws persons who furnish materials for the construction of a building, have a lien against such building for the payment of the value of such materials. See Lien of Mechanics.