Bloomingdale Bros. v. Benjamin

In this nonjury action, the plaintiff store seeks to recover the contract price of certain merchandise (mostly food) purchased at the instance of the defendant wife, and the defendant husband has been joined on the theory that the goods were necessaries for which the wife as agent had a right to obligate him.

The defendants Benjamin were married in December of 1941, and by normal standards, until their separation in 1949, apparently lived on a grandiose scale. Appurtenances to their living were a thirty-room summer home at Southampton and a twenty-room apartment in town, maintained by an…