Court Opinion

ID: 9706516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:45:28.948677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:23.330912
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority’s sesquipedalian opinion, in which they purport to rewrite part of the Maryland Law of Contracts.
If, as has been said, judicial activism is to the law what garlic is to cooking — it improves the product — then too much garlic has been added in the instant case, and instead of pot roast we are being served hash.
Aside from the fact that I have great difficulty in determining why a five year restriction against competition is violative of public policy but three years is not, I am unable to accept the proposition that courts should rewrite agreements in order to save the parties from themselves.
Paraphrasing Neil Armstrong, the majority makes one small step to validate the invalid and one giant step that changes substantially the law of contracts. With their *252opinion the majority takes the Court on its first stride on a road that will lead Lord knows where.
Patently, the judicially rewritten agreement in the case sub judice is not what the parties intended. The majority not only sanctions a trial court’s writing of a contract but then permits the court to award damages on the strength of what it rewrote. Imagine the unrest and uncertainty in a business world where courts may rewrite a contract because they believe the contract is unfair to one side or the other, rewrite leases because they are worded in a manner which appears tilted in favor of the landlord as opposed to the tenant, rewrite bonds because the judge thinks they do not pay enough interest or that they pay too much, or change the consideration because it is too little or too one-sided.
I recognize that some courts, in finding unreasonable the express time restrictions on competition in employment contracts, have modified those temporal restrictions so as to achieve reasonableness. See John Roane, Inc. v. Tweed, 33 Del.Ch. 4, 89 A.2d 548 (1952); Miller Mechanical, Inc. v. Ruth, 300 So.2d 11 (Fla.1974); Slade Gorton & Co. v. O’Neil, 355 Mass. 4, 242 N.E.2d 551 (1968); Davies & Davies Agency, Inc. v. Davies, 298 N.W.2d 127 (Minn.1980); Schmidl v. Central Laundry & Supply Co., 13 N.Y.S.2d 817 (N.Y.1939); Raimonde v. Van Vlerah, 42 Ohio St.2d 21, 325 N.E.2d 544 (1975); Bob Pagan Ford, Inc. v. Smith, 638 S.W.2d 176 (Tex.App. 1st Dist.1982). Other courts have directed their attention to the “blue pencil rule” itself and rejected it. American Eutectic Welding Alloys Sales Co. v. Rodriguez, 480 F.2d 223 (1st Cir.1973); Ehlers v. Iowa Warehouse Co., 188 N.W.2d 368 (Iowa 1971); Solari Industries, Inc. v. Malady, 55 N.J. 571, 264 A.2d 53 (1970).
In light of the revision of the Restatement Second of Contracts and those pronouncements made by the courts of some of our sister states, modification might be considered the “modern trend.” Raimonde, 325 N.E.2d at 546. That does not mean, however, that Maryland will follow the *253“modern trend” parade. History demonstrates that, before they join a parade as marchers, Maryland courts want to know where the parade is going. The “modern trend” in tort law, for example, appears to favor comparative negligence, yet the Court of Appeals has recently rejected that concept. Harrison v. Montgomery County Board of Education, 295 Md. 442, 456 A.2d 894 (1983). The “modern trend” allows a child to sue his or her parent in negligence, but Maryland does not. Frye v. Frye, 305 Md. 542, 505 A.2d 826 (1986). The majority of the panel, it appears, prefers to ignore Maryland’s legal history and rushes to join the parade.
Implicitly, the majority suggests that the Court of Appeals in MacIntosh v. Brunswick Corp., 241 Md. 24, 215 A.2d 222 (1965); Tawney v. Mutual System of Md., Inc., 186 Md. 508, 47 A.2d 372 (1946); and American Weekly, Inc. v. Patterson, 179 Md. 109, 16 A.2d 912 (1940), either ignored or overlooked its powers to rewrite restrictive employment agreements so as to have them conform with public policy. The Court of Appeals, in my view, was fully cognizant of its authority to change the invalid time and space restrictions, but its belief in the sanctity of contract was obviously much stronger than that of the majority of this panel.
That the majority struggles to justify its actions is made crystalline by the length of the epistle in which it espouses an inherent power in the courts to rewrite restrictive employment contracts upon the terms and conditions the court deems fair and equitable.
I think it is for the Court of Appeals, not this Court, to set the judicial policy of this State. We should continue to follow Macintosh and its siblings unless and until the Court of Appeals holds otherwise.
Needless to say, I would reverse the judgment of the circuit court.