Opinion ID: 2212444
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: whether the trial court erred in revising the mall lease from a twenty-year term to a fifteen-year term at the same rental cost with two options to renew the lease for five-year periods?

Text: In this case, neither Vermilyeas nor BDL ever mentioned a fifteen-year-lease term. Vermilyeas wanted a five-year-lease term and were told that they could not have this because permanent financing required twenty-year-lease terms. The parties never agreed to a five-year-lease term. It was the intent of both parties to enter into a twenty-year lease. SDCL 21-11-1 provides in part that [w]hen through fraud or mutual mistake of the parties, or a mistake of one party which the other at the time knew or suspected, a written contract does not truly express the intention of the parties, it may be revised on the application of a party aggrieved so as to express that intention.... In Teutsch v. Hvistendahl, 72 S.D. 48, 52, 29 N.W.2d 389, 391 (1947), this court cited 5 Williston Contracts § 1549 (Rev.Ed.) for the proposition that if, because of mistake as to an antecedent or existing situation, the parties make a written instrument which they might not have made, except for the mistake, the court cannot reform the writing into one which it thinks they would have made, but in fact never agreed to. As stated in Clark v. Bergen, 75 S.D. 48, 53, 59 N.W.2d 250, 252 (1953), The court only reforms and does not undertake to make a contract for the parties. Here the mistake or fraud, if any, was in the making or inducement of the contract. By revising the lease to fifteen years the trial court attempted to make a contract it thought the parties would have made, if not for the mistake. Neither this court, nor the trial court can make a contract for these parties, whether it be for five years or fifteen years. In so doing the trial court committed reversible error. The Vermilyeas' remedy is rescission, not reformation.