Opinion ID: 4026632
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Acceptance of an Offer

Text: As stated, the listing agreement obligates Oak Knoll to pay Harris a commission should there be acceptance of an offer during the term of the listing agreement or within six months of its termination. The parties don't appear to dispute that there was acceptance of an offer to purchase the property in October 2011, within the effective term of the listing agreement. Harris accordingly argues that he was owed a commission as of that date, because (in his telling) the listing agreement requires Oak Knoll to pay him upon the mere acceptance of an offer, regardless of whether this results in a sale. Oak Knoll counters that the listing agreement requires that a sale actually occur in order for Harris to earn his commission. Thus, succinctly put, our task is to interpret the contract (using Connecticut law) to determine whether Oak Knoll's obligation to pay Harris is predicated on the - 10 - sale of the property. See In re Advanced Cellular Sys's., Inc., 483 F.3d 7, 13-14 (1st Cir. 2007). Although the listing agreement is hardly an exemplar of draftsmanship, we nonetheless think it unambiguous. See Salce v. Wolczek, 104 A.3d 694, 698 (Conn. 2014) (If the contract is unambiguous, its interpretation and application is a question of law for the court, permitting the court to resolve a breach of contract claim on summary judgment if there is no genuine dispute of material fact.); see also Ramirez v. Health Net of the Ne., Inc., 938 A.2d 576, 587 (Conn. 2008) (A contract is ambiguous if the intent of the parties is not clear and certain from the language of the contract itself.).6 That is, the language of the contract leaves no doubt that the parties intended that a sale take place in order for Harris to earn his commission. We acknowledge, of course, that in Connecticut, a court has no right to add a new term to a contract. Williams v. Lilley, 34 A. 765, 768 (Conn. 1895). We have not done so here. While the acceptance-of-an-offer provision does not explicitly 6 Indeed, other courts -- when interpreting contracts under Connecticut law -- have found that typographical errors and the like do not necessarily render those contracts ambiguous. See, e.g., United Aluminum Corp. v. Boc Grp., Inc., No. 08-CV-977 (JCH), 2009 WL 2589486, at -7,  n.5 (D. Conn. Aug. 21, 2009) (finding contract unambiguous despite the presence of typographical error[s] or mistakes produced by inattentive drafting). And so too here. The many such errors in the listing agreement may produce frustration on the part of the reader, but they do not produce ambiguity so as to stave off summary judgment. - 11 - state that an accepted offer must result in a sale, the text of the listing agreement nevertheless indicates that this is precisely what must happen if Harris is to earn his commission. For starters, the acceptance-of-an-offer provision is qualified by important language: that Oak Knoll agrees to pay the AGENT a commission as per this AGREEMENT. The last four words dictate that we read this provision consistent with the contract as a whole. And indeed, the sale requirement is unambiguously reflected in the contract. Cf. Ramirez, 938 A.2d at 587 (explaining that courts should not import terms into [an] agreement . . . that are not reflected in the contract (emphasis added)). For example, the listing agreement is titled a NonExclusive Agency Sale Agreement. Cf. Bialowans v. Minor, 550 A.2d 637, 639-40 (Conn. 1988) (holding, in the context of interpreting contract language, that a section heading delimited the scope of language appearing under said heading). Similarly, the first sentence of the quoted portion of the listing agreement provides: In order protect AGENT should the property known as Oak Knoll Apartments . . . (the PROPERTY) is sold within six (6) months from the date hereof, to sell the property for $7,000,000.00 or any such price as the OWNER may subsequently agree upon, agree to pay AGENT the commission set forth below. The drafting errors do not obscure the critical point: this sentence announces the general purpose of the listing agreement - 12 - (viz., protecting the agent in the event that the property is sold) and concomitantly sets forth Oak Knoll's duty to pay Harris a commission. A commonsense reading would suggest that Oak Knoll's obligation to pay Harris is connected to the overall purpose of the listing agreement. Cf. Dist. of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 577 (2008) (Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.). And by thus linking the protection of Harris's interests, the sale of the property, and Oak Knoll's obligation to pay Harris a commission, the listing agreement indicates that a sale must take place in order for Harris to earn his commission. Other features of the listing agreement support this conclusion. The second-quoted paragraph of the listing agreement conditions payment of Harris's commission on the property being sold during the term of the listing agreement. The third-quoted paragraph of the listing agreement provides that the commission shall be due and payable . . . upon closing of title. Similarly, Schedule A states (under the heading of Sale Commissions) that [t]he commission for selling the property shall be [] 4.8%.7 All told, these repeated references to the sale of the property confirm 7 As the listing agreement expressly referenced Schedule A, and the parties were undoubtedly aware of that document's terms, we may properly consider it as having been incorporated into the listing agreement. See, e.g., Allstate Life Ins. Co. v. BFA Ltd. P'ship, 948 A.2d 318, 324 (Conn. 2008). - 13 - that the parties intended to make Harris's commission contingent on the sale of the property. Finally (and critically), reading the listing agreement as not requiring a sale (as Harris would have us do) would render the first and second-quoted paragraphs of the listing agreement superfluous, thereby contravening well-settled Connecticut law. See Ramirez, 938 A.2d at 586 (The law of contract interpretation militates against interpreting a contract in a way that renders a provision superfluous. (internal citations omitted)). That is, Harris maintains that the listing agreement obligates Oak Knoll to pay him if an offer is accepted, regardless of whether a sale ultimately occurs. The listing agreement, however, is crystalclear that Oak Knoll must pay Harris a commission if the property is sold. It is axiomatic that a sale is preceded by acceptance of an offer; as Harris concedes, the former necessarily entails the latter. Cf. Norfolk & W. Ry. Co. v. Sims, 191 U.S. 441, 447 (1903). Consequently, if acceptance of an offer were all that were needed for Harris to earn his commission, there would have been no need to specify (as the listing agreement repeatedly does) that he could do so upon the successful closing of a sale. Thus, we do not believe that the listing agreement is susceptible to two reasonable interpretations and that Oak Knoll merely offers a better reading than Harris. Cf. Cruz v. Visual Perceptions, LLC, 84 A.3d 828, 835 (Conn. 2014) (If the language of the contract is - 14 - susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation, the contract is ambiguous.). Rather, we believe that Harris's interpretation of the listing agreement is untenable, failing to give operative effect to every provision in order to reach a reasonable overall result. R.T. Vanderbilt Co., Inc. v. Cont'l Cas. Co., 870 A.2d 1048, 1059 (Conn. 2005).8 The lily having been sufficiently gilded, the important point is this: the listing agreement unambiguously requires that a sale take place in order for Harris to earn his commission.9 The 8 Harris tries to flip this point on its head, arguing that the foregoing interpretation of the listing agreement renders the acceptance-of-an-offer provision superfluous. His argument is without merit. The acceptance-of-an-offer provision as we have construed it expands Harris's contractual rights in two respects: First, it requires Oak Knoll to pay a commission if an offer were to be accepted within the term of the listing agreement and resulted in a sale, but the sale only closed after the listing agreement's expiration, and no negotiations took place so as to keep the listing agreement alive until the closing. In such a case, Harris would not be entitled to a commission but for the acceptance-of-an-offer provision. Second, this provision enables Harris to claim a commission if an offer were to be accepted (again, resulting in a sale) within six months of the listing agreement's expiration and in the absence of continued negotiations. And once more, in such a scenario, Harris's only route to a commission would be through the acceptance-of-an-offer provision. Thus, our interpretation of the listing agreement does not render the acceptance-of-an-offer provision superfluous. 9 Accordingly, it does not matter whether Navarino was a ready, willing, and able buyer, as Oak Knoll was not obligated to pay Harris unless a sale actually happened. Harris similarly argues that the bankruptcy court erred in finding that Oak Knoll was not responsible for the failure of the 2011 P&S. However, our conclusion that the listing agreement requires a sale may make it - 15 - bankruptcy court thus correctly determined that Harris was not entitled to his commission based on the acceptance of an offer in 2011.