Opinion ID: 448869
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Distributor Agreement

Text: 19 The district court determined that the Distributor Agreement, as modified and signed by Camar, constituted a counteroffer which was never accepted by Argo. The appellant insists that the trial judge erred in dismissing the significance of the Distributor Agreement, which it contends demonstrated Camar's intention to grant Argo an exclusive agency. In this appeal, and throughout the trial, Argo has maintained that it had an oral agreement with Camar, pursuant to which Argo had been granted an exclusive sales agency which entitled it to a ten per cent commission on all sales made in its territory regardless of whether or not Argo had procured those sales. Argo claims that the Distributor Agreement reflected this oral agreement and that its case was prejudiced by the trial court's erroneous legal conclusion that the agreement had no significance. 20 The appellant argues that its failure to sign the agreement does not prevent it from recovering under its terms, that courts have allowed parties to sue to enforce contracts although they have not set their hand to the actual document. However, those cases in which courts have enforced contracts against a signatory, in favor of a non-signing party, have involved instances where the non-signing party has accepted [the] written agreement and has acted upon it. Dreyfus & Co. v. Maresca, 224 N.Y.S.2d 813, 814 (Sup.Ct., N.Y.Co.1961). Here, admittedly, major differences existed between Argo and Camar concerning the Distributor Agreement. First and foremost of these was the disagreement between the parties as to whether the relationship to be created was to be a sales agency, which Argo came to desire, or a distributor relationship, as was Camar's expectation. Additional elements of the agreement which presented bones of contention concerned the territory covered by the agreement and terms of payment. It is clear that the plaintiff-appellant did not accept the terms of the written agreement, nor did it act on those terms so as to entitle it to enforce the contract against the defendant-appellee. 21 Accordingly, we find that the trial judge did not err in holding that there was no agreement between the parties manifested in the Distributor Agreement and that the signed Distributor Agreement was merely a counteroffer by the defendant which was never accepted by the plaintiff.