Opinion ID: 1988100
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Wesley Green's Statements to Edna Green

Text: The chancery court decided (1) that Wesley Green told Edna Green that she would be removed as a guarantor of Champs-Elysees's line of credit at Am-South Bank if she sold her stock to him and (2) that Edna Green was not a guarantor on this line of credit. Based on these determinations, the chancery court concluded that Wesley Green's representation regarding the AmSouth Bank line of credit was simply untrue. Wesley Green insisted both in the chancery court and on appeal that his representation to his mother regarding the AmSouth Bank line of credit was true. The Court of Appeals did not address this issue. In their Tenn. R. Civ. P. 56.03 statement of undisputed facts, Edna Green and Champs-Elysees asserted that [Wesley] Green represented to Edna Green that if she sold her stock to him, AmSouth Bank would remove her as a guarantor on Champs-Elysees substantial line of credit. In his response, Wesley Green stated that [t]his statement is disputed. [Wesley Green] told [Edna Green] that he had been personally told by Richard Coppen, a business banker at AmSouth Bank, that persons owning more than 20% of the outstanding stock were required to be signatories on the line of credit. [Wesley Green] never told his mother that she was on the line of credit. Notwithstanding Wesley Green's response, the chancery court relied on the factual assertion of Edna Green and Champs-Elysees in awarding them a summary judgment. In his deposition, Wesley Green recounted the discussion regarding his mother being a guarantor of Champs-Elysees line of credit as follows: I never told my mother that I knew for a fact that she was on that loan or that I had seen her sign that loan. What I told her was ... that Richard Coppin at AmSouth Bank told me that everybody who had a 20 percent stake in the company, that the bank's policy was that they had to be on the loan. Therefore, I assumed that she was on the loan. And she told me that she didn't think she was on the loan, that she didn't remember signing the loan. And I said, well, Richard Coppin tells me that everybody with a 20 percent stake is on the loan, so I think that you might be. Wesley Green also testified that I told my mother that ... I thought that she was on the line of credit because of what Richard Coppin had told me. Accordingly, he maintained that he simply told his mother what Richard Coppin told me. Edna Green testified that Wesley Green said that ... if I sold that stock, I would not be responsible for the loan at the bank that the company had. However, when addressing the question of whether Wesley Green ever [said] anything more than just, I think you're on the loan, Edna Green responded [n]ot that I know of. The record makes it extremely difficult to assess whether Wesley Green made an untrue statement regarding the AmSouth Bank line of credit. Both the exact words spoken by Wesley Green and Edna Green and what was really said are very much in dispute in this case. If Mr. Coppin told Wesley Green that bank policy required persons with more than twenty percent interest in a corporation to guarantee loans to the corporation, and if Wesley Green, believing Mr. Coppin's statements to be true, simply passed the information on to Edna Green, then Wesley Green's statements to his mother regarding her liability for the line of credit were not untrue. Further, viewed in the light most favorable to Wesley Green, these statements would not have been misleading but rather would have accurately reflected Wesley Green's concerns about his mother's liability for the loan and the source of these concerns. [42] Because of the factual disputes and uncertainty surrounding the substance of the conversations between Wesley Green and Edna Green regarding the AmSouth Bank line of credit, the chancery court erred by concluding, as a matter of law, that Wesley Green's statements to his mother were untrue.