Opinion ID: 4376974
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Agency in Common Law

Text: [¶8] “Agency is the fiduciary relationship which results from the manifestation of consent by one person to another that the other shall act on his [or her] behalf and subject to his [or her] control, and consent by the other so to act.” Libby v. Concord Gen. Mut. Ins. Co., 452 A.2d 979, 981 (Me. 1982). Generally, “[a] person . . . subject to a duty[] to perform an act . . . can properly appoint an agent to perform the act . . . unless public policy or the agreement with another requires personal performance.” Restatement (Second) of Agency § 17 (Am. Law Inst. 1958); see also Restatement (Third) of Agency § 3.04 cmt. c (Am. Law Inst. 2006) (“A person may delegate performance of an act if its legal consequences for that person are the same whether the act is performed personally or by another.”); Stenzel v. Dell, Inc., 2005 ME 37, ¶ 37, 870 A.2d 133 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 318(1) (Am. Law Inst. 1981)) (“An obligor can properly delegate the performance of his duty to another unless the delegation is contrary to public policy or the terms of his promise.”). 5 [¶9] With that background, this appeal presents three questions: (1) whether the loan servicer, BSI, was acting as an agent of the mortgagee at the time it sent the notice of the right to cure to Needham; (2) whether the mortgage contract requires personal performance by the mortgagee when sending such a notice; and (3) whether section 6111 abrogates the common law so that, regardless of the existence of an agency relationship, the mortgagee itself must send the notice. [¶10] The answer to the first question is implicit in the narrow scope of the issue presented to the trial court by agreement of the parties. The parties asked the court to determine whether a loan servicer may give a notice of the right to cure on behalf of a mortgagee pursuant to section 6111(1), but—as the parties confirmed at oral argument—did not dispute that BSI was a loan servicer acting on behalf of the mortgagee in this case. Therefore, by definition, BSI was acting as the mortgagee’s agent. Thus, the dispositive issues presented here are entirely questions of law. We address the other two questions in turn.