Opinion ID: 1288521
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: implied covenant of ordinary care

Text: Duty sufficient to support an action for negligence may be engendered by common law, statute or contract. Brubaker v. Glenrock Lodge Intern. Order of Odd Fellows, 526 P.2d 52, 58 (Wyo.1974). In opposing summary judgment, the Tidwells asserted that HOM's duty took the form of an implied covenant of ordinary care. Such an implied covenant may arise from a contract which creates a relationship engendering a duty to exercise ordinary care. Id. at 59. Although the duty at issue in Brubaker was between the parties to a contract, it is clear that such a duty may also extend to third-party beneficiaries in the proper circumstances. Ely v. Kirk, 707 P.2d 706, 710 (Wyo.1985). Here, however, the Tidwells, insisting themselves to be third-party beneficiaries, presented the district court with a housing voucher contract between the Cheyenne Housing Authority and Leonard Sullivan, two strangers to this appeal. Without a contract involving HOM, there can be little basis for a covenant, implied or otherwise. Moreover, the Tidwells' case against HOM was not written upon a clean slate. See CLS v. CLJ, 693 P.2d 774, 775 (Wyo.1985). The district court had already found that no duty ran from the Cheyenne Housing Authority to the Tidwells. Not having appealed that judgment, the Tidwells cannot resurrect their moribund arguments against the Cheyenne Housing Authority in their suit against HOM. Generally, when a court has decided an issue of fact or law necessary to its judgment, relitigation of the issue in a suit involving one of the parties to that judgment is precluded. Atchison v. State of Wyo., 763 F.2d 388, 391 (10th Cir.1985). To permit the contrary is to imbue the courts with the aura of the gaming table[.] Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation, 402 U.S. 313, 329, 91 S.Ct. 1434, 1443, 28 L.E.2d 788 (1971). The certainty of that rule is enhanced where the legal duties of a second defendant are purely derivative of one in whose favor judgment has already been entered. Reconstruction Finance Corporation v. First Nat. Bank of Cody, 17 F.R.D. 397, 405 (D.Wyo.1955). Appendix A to the Tidwells' appellate brief appears to be a contract between the Cheyenne Housing Authority and HOM, relative inter alia, to inspection of units for the Section 8 Existing [Housing] Program[.] By any stretch of the legal imagination, such an appendage remains much too little, submitted far too late and entirely improperly to serve as a cornerstone for the Tidwells' case. Gifford v. Casper Neon Sign Co., Inc., 618 P.2d 547, 551 (Wyo.1980). Were that contract properly before us, however, it could not facilitate a more favorable result for the Tidwells in the absence of duty upon the Cheyenne Housing Authority. The Tidwells' implied covenant of ordinary care claim against HOM necessarily requires them to establish their status as third-party beneficiaries of the contract between HOM and the Cheyenne Housing Authority. We hold that third-party beneficiary claims against promisor HOM must, necessarily, be vulnerable to those defenses available to promisee Cheyenne Housing Authority as against the same claims. Farmers' State Bank of Worland v. Nicholson, 36 Wyo. 221, 226-27, 254 P. 134, 135 (1927). Insofar as the Cheyenne Housing Authority's defense to the Tidwells' claims has been the subject of a final and binding judgment, HOM may suffer no lesser fate at the hands of the Tidwells, at least upon any third-party beneficiary theory. Third-party beneficiaries depend upon a clear duty exacted from the promisor by the promisee in favor of the third party seeking relief. McNeill v. New York City Housing Authority, 719 F.Supp. 233, 249 (S.D.N.Y.1989). When the promisee has been absolved of duty to the third party, the nexus between the promisor and the third party is irretrievably broken. Assuming, arguendo, that the Cheyenne Housing Authority's lack of duty to the Tidwells did not obviate a duty to exercise ordinary care, as between HOM and the Tidwells, Brubaker remains far less than a foundation upon which the Tidwells might build a claim. The Brubaker holding is limited to unskillful or negligent construction as expressly contrasted with use and failure to inspect. Brubaker, 526 P.2d at 57-59.