BARZAGA v.

CA (funeral)
What is considered time is of the essence?
In the case of Barzaga, his ill wife who was dying requested to be buried before
Christmas in the event that she dies. As faith would have it, the wife indeed died
before Christmas and Barzaga, to fulfill her wish, went to the hardware store of Alviar
to purchase the necessary materials in constructing a niche for his wife's internment.
He told the hardware store worker that the materials should be delivered the
following day at 8am in the cemetery because he has workers there waiting for the
materials.
However, Barzaga failed to mention to the store owner and the clerk that the materials
being delivered were going to be used to bury the wife before Christmas. All he did
was stipulate the delivery date, time and place of the materials.
So when the store failed to deliver on the date stipulated, was the store owner in
default?
YES. Because there is stipulated due date and time. Also, they knew that there would
be workers in the cemetery waiting to receive the delivery and to issue the payment
so in that case time is of the essence in the performance of the obligation. But yet the
date passed.
Why should it be different in Barzaga (as compared to Pantaleon v. AMEX)? Why is it
time is of the essence?
Here, there will be workers waiting in the cemetery. Barzaga said deliver on this date,
this time at cemetery X where workers will be waiting without mentioning the plan to
bury the wife before Christmas. SC said, time is of the essence because in this case,
Barzaga stated that the materials were to be delivered in the cemetery waiting so the
store ought to have known that the only way you are delivering there is if work ought
to be done on the same day because no one would be staying there after a certain
time. And so in short, the SC said that there was a place and that place was very
peculiar and no person would be waiting there or staying there overnight - and the
workers were there. If Barzaga only mentioned the workers were there and not that
they were waiting in the cemetery, then maybe that would not be enough to really let
the store know that time is of the essence kind of obligation. But here, there was
mention of the cemetery.