Opinion ID: 171042
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Batteries Purchased as Part of a UPS System

Text: The Agreement applies to Products, defined as hardware that shall be described in a Product and Pricing Attachment... (the `P & P Attachment'). Aplt. App. 56. The P & P Attachment lists several hardware items. Among them are UPS systems. UPS system batteries, however, are not specifically mentioned. This omission raises the following question. Where the P & P Attachment reads Uninterruptible Power Supply Systems, which ending applies: including batteries or batteries not included? What, in other words, was the common usage, the plain and generally accepted meaning of the words used, East Ridge, 109 P.3d at 974, that would have been mutually understood by Liebert and Level 3 when they entered into the Agreement? At least with respect to batteries ordered as part of complete UPS systems, the Agreement's term Products might encompass the batteries. Three pieces of extrinsic evidence suggest as much. First, the parties' prior course of dealings shows that batteries were likely understood to be a component of UPS systems sold under the Agreement. In the first half of 2000, Level 3 purchased between 50 and 100 UPS systems from Liebert. Each order came with brand-new, factory-fresh batteries, just as one would expect if batteries were Products, which Liebert expressly warrantied under the Agreement to be delivered new. Ordinary course of business between Liebert and Level 3 thus strongly suggests the parties understood UPS systems and batteries to go together. The UPS system, after all, cannot function properly without this key component. Second, a standard quotation that Liebert would send to Level 3 describes 29 different components included with a purchase of a UPS system. One of these 29 components is a battery  its biggest component, in fact, representing just under half of the cost of a complete UPS system. Finally, as one of Level 3's representatives testified, the batteries and the UPS's are one in the same.... [T]hey're useless unless together. Aplt. App. 1126. Just as one does not expect to buy a car only to discover the battery is missing, one apparently does not buy UPS systems without batteries. Thus, when one buys a UPS system, one may be justified in assuming a battery accompanies the system. All three items of extrinsic evidence, especially taken together, suggest the Agreement applies to batteries ordered as part of complete UPS systems. In the face of this, Liebert categorically maintains that the Agreement unambiguously excludes UPS batteries. We disagree. Liebert starts with the canon of construction that expression in a contract of one or more things of a class implies exclusion of all not expressed. Elliott v. Joyce, 889 P.2d 43, 46 (Colo.1994). Because UPS systems are listed and batteries are not, Liebert argues, batteries are not Products. But this principle of interpreting written documents  expressio unius est exclusio alterius  does not support Liebert's argument. Far from being just one thing in the class of items that includes UPS systems and other similar products, batteries form an integral part of a UPS system. The batteries themselves are thus in a completely different class  the class of components constituting a complete UPS system. By mentioning UPS systems, the Agreement may be understood as implicitly mentioning all of the components. The expressio unius principle finds no application here. Liebert further contends language elsewhere in the Agreement shows that UPS system batteries cannot be Products, as the term is defined in the Agreement. The Agreement, in addition to general warranties for all Products, describes limited warranties for UPS systems. By its terms, the limited warranty is void if User allows any battery for the Liebert product to discharge below the minimum battery voltage cutoff point. Aplt. App. 97. To Liebert, this language leads to an inescapable conclusion  batteries are something different than a Liebert product. But to us, the quoted language  employing an undefined term Liebert product rather than the key defined term Product  does not support the conclusion that the Agreement unambiguously excludes batteries from the term Products. The quoted language is simply beside the point. Accordingly, we reject Liebert's categorical argument that batteries, as a matter of law, are never Products. But in rejecting Liebert's argument, we do not mean to accept the opposite  that the batteries are unambiguously Products, to which the Agreement would apply. Rather, as the following discussion illustrates, the issue is ambiguous and must be decided by the jury.