Opinion ID: 617942
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Penford's JMOL Motion

Text: Penford asserts that the district court should have granted its motion for judgment as a matter of law under the doctrine of contra proferentem. According to Penford, the district court correctly determined that the policy language at issue was ambiguous but erred in failing to resolve that ambiguity by applying the doctrine against the insurers, as the drafters of the policy. In considering the denial of Penford's JMOL motion, we construe all evidence in the light most favorable to the insurers. We conclude that the doctrine of contra proferentem is inapplicable here. First, the evidence most favorable to the insurers is equivocal on the identity of the drafter of the policy form, given the back-and-forth nature of the drafting process and the relatively equal bargaining power of the parties. See Terra Intern., Inc. v. Miss. Chem. Corp., 119 F.3d 688, 692 (8th Cir.1997) (declining to apply the doctrine on grounds that parties were of relatively equal bargaining strength). Moreover, the doctrine should not be applied when the question may be resolved in light of facts developed via extrinsic evidence. See De-Geare v. Alpha Portland Indus., Inc., 837 F.2d 812, 816 (8th Cir.1988) (concluding that [a]mbiguities should be construed against the drafter only if after application of ordinary rules of construction and consideration of extrinsic evidence, the ambiguities remain) vacated on other grounds sub nom., DeGeare v. Slattery Grp., 489 U.S. 1049, 109 S.Ct. 1305, 103 L.Ed.2d 575 (1989); see also Residential Mktg. Grp., Inc. v. Granite Inv. Grp., 933 F.2d 546, 549 (7th Cir.1991) (concluding that the doctrine does not bar the use of oral testimony to disambiguate a written contract, but is a tie-breaker, used to resolve cases in which the written contract remains ambiguous even after oral evidence has been admitted). We thus conclude that the district court properly denied Penford's JMOL.