Opinion ID: 2977357
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Contract and warranty claims against IBM

Text: The district court granted summary judgment to IBM on Irwin’s contract and warranty claims, holding that those claims were barred by the two-year contractual limitations period in the IBM Customer Agreement (ICA) and the IBM Services Agreement (ISA). Irwin Seating II, 2007 WL 2351007 at -10. Because Irwin filed its complaint more than two years after the claims arose, Irwin concedes that these claims against IBM are barred if either the ISA or the ICA is part of the agreement. Irwin instead argues that neither the ICA nor the ISA was incorporated into the SOW. But the SOW plainly expresses the parties’ intent to incorporate either the ISA or “an equivalent agreement signed by both of us.” Such incorporation of additional terms into a contract by reference to another document has long been permitted in Michigan, as elsewhere. See, e.g., Forge v. Smith, 580 N.W.2d 876, 881 (Mich. 1998) (“Where one writing references another instrument for additional contract terms, the two writings should be read together.”). The parties agree that no signed copy of the ISA has been located. Irwin thus points to language in the ISA that states “[b]y signing below for our respective enterprises, each of us agrees to the terms of this Agreement,” and argues that this language creates an independent signing requirement that must be met before the ISA’s terms can bind the parties. Nothing, however, 10 No. 07-2126 Irwin Seating v. IBM prevented the parties from agreeing to the terms of the ISA by incorporating it by reference into the SOW, which does not require signatures on the ISA in order to make its terms part of the agreement. Regarding the ICA, the district court held that it was also incorporated into the SOW because its material terms are “equivalent” and because Irwin executed a contract titled “IBM Customer Agreement Signature Page for Attachments” in 1996. The 1996 document states that “[b]y signing below for our respective Enterprises, each of us agrees to the terms of the IBM Customer Agreement and the included Attachments.” After determining that the IBM Customer Agreement Signature Page for Attachments met the SOW’s requirement that an “equivalent document” be signed by both parties, the district court found an alternative basis for its conclusion that the terms of the ICA were incorporated into the agreement between the parties. This alternative basis rests on the fact that the PCA #1 constitutes the agreement under which IBM agreed to perform work associated with the integration of Manufacturing Manager with OneWorld. As the district court correctly noted, this work constituted “[t]he gravamen of Irwin’s complaint” against IBM. Irwin Seating II, 2007 WL 2351007 at . The PCA #1 incorporated the ICA with no signature requirement. Under either theory, the district court properly concluded that no genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether the parties incorporated the two-year limitations period into their agreement via either the ISA or the ICA. The grant of summary judgment in favor of IBM on Irwin’s warranty and contract claims is therefore affirmed on the basis of the district court’s thorough reasoning in Irwin Seating II, 2007 WL 2351007 at -10.