Opinion ID: 848763
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: construction of the antiwaiver clause

Text: I disagree also with the majority's assumption that the antiwaiver clause applies in this case. Under the parties' antiwaiver clause, defendant was entitled to exact compliance by plaintiff with the terms of the written agreement, even if it failed consistently to insist upon strict compliance by plaintiff. [3] Plaintiff asserts that it could show that defendant failed to insist on strict compliance by plaintiff; it allowed plaintiff to solicit accounts not available to it under the contract. Defendant infers that, even if plaintiff's allegation is true, defendant was entitled to exact compliance by plaintiff. The compliance would be, apparently, that plaintiff would refrain from claiming commissions from sales to these accounts. The majority appears to agree with defendant and interprets this reasoning as an obvious application of the contract language as written. I quite disagree. The antiwaiver clause is not implicated under the facts of this case. Therefore, waiver of it never becomes an issue. The following hypothetical example illustrates how, I believe, the clause should be interpreted: Assume that the same contract exists as in the case before us. Plaintiff seeks to makes sales to company A, which is an excluded company under the parties' agreement. Plaintiff notifies defendant of its activities and defendant is silent. Plaintiff relies on defendant's silence and tries, but is unable, to make the sale. Then, plaintiff seeks to make sales to company B, another company excluded from plaintiff's territory. This time defendant objects, reminding plaintiff that company B is an excluded account for which plaintiff is not entitled to commissions. Plaintiff makes the sale and claims the commission. Defendant is entitled to refuse to pay, even though it received the proceeds of the sale. It was entitled to strict compliance by plaintiff regarding company B, even though it had failed to insist upon strict compliance by plaintiff regarding company A. Its prior practice ... at variance with the [contract's] terms ... [did not] constitute a waiver of [defendant's] right to demand exact compliance with the terms of [of the contract.] See n. 3. However, if plaintiff had made the sale to company A, defendant could not have successfully relied on the antiwavier clause. When plaintiff attempted to sell to company A, defendant had no prior practice of waiving the no-sales-to-excluded-accounts contract provision. Moreover, when contracting, plaintiff surely did not agree that defendant could waive plaintiff's compliance with one provision, then insist on plaintiff's compliance with another if plaintiff, thereby, worked without commission. To read the language as the majority does would mean that the parties contracted that one could cheat the other, something to which they surely did not intend to agree. Therefore, properly construed, the antiwaiver clause does not apply to the facts of this case and whether it was waived is irrelevant.