Opinion ID: 10349
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I don’t read every purchase order on routine

Text: customers, no. Q. Is there anything unusual, to your understanding, back in April of 1992 for a salesperson of RSI to agree to sign a customer’s paperwork in order to do the work? A. For routine customers, it was not. Davis testified that there was no misunderstanding or confusion between Crown and RSI as to the nature of their contractual relationship.8 Bryce testified that, on June 23, 1992, he was instructed to go to Crown for a specific purpose--“[t]o sign a work order for the work.” Generali directs our attention to a number of contract cases in support of its contention that Crown and RSI had not agreed to the terms of the Crown/RSI Contract at the time of the Accident. 8 In a deposition taken on September 15, 1994, Davis was asked if RSI and Crown entered into a master service agreement in May 1992 to “avoid any confusion or misunderstandings in the future.” A. There never was any confusion between us and RSI about a contract. The confusion is when there’s an incident and attorneys get involved. . . . . Q. At the time you signed the blanket agreement with RSI in May of 1992, did you form an opinion at that particular time that there had been some misunderstandings or confusion about what legal obligations Crown had or that third-party contractors had? A. Absolutely none between Crown and RSI. They had absolutely no problem with signing our agreement because I felt like it was their understanding. This was nothing more than what they had been doing all along. 14 In each of these cases, however, the existence of a contract, or the existence or meaning of one or more of its terms, was disputed by one of the purported parties to the contested contract. The case sub judice involves nothing of the sort. In this case, neither Crown or RSI contests the existence of the Crown/RSI Contract; neither party disputes the meaning or the validity of any of its terms, the Additional Insured Requirement included. “[Texas] courts rightfully assume that the parties to a contract are in the best position to know what was intended by the language they employed, by their subsequent acts relative to it.” Droemer v. Transit Mix Concrete, 457 S.W.2d 332, 335 (Tex. Civ. App.-- Corpus Christi 1970, no writ) (citation omitted). We find that there was sufficient summary judgment evidence as to when there was a meeting of the minds on the various terms of the Crown/RSI Contract, essential and otherwise, to carry these issues to the jury. Thus, summary judgment was improper on the issue of whether Crown was an additional insured under the Generali/RSI Policy when the Accident occurred. Because this issue must be left to the jury, there is no need to consider the knownloss issue or the “occurrence” issue raised by Generali.