Court Opinion

ID: 9735754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:29:29.931591+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:01.264140
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting in part).
I agree with the majority’s disposition of the actions against Rapistan, Manning, and Michaud, and of the count against Eidsness alleging negligent misrepresentation. I am of the opinion, however, that this court cannot countenance intentional fraudulent misrepresentation and would, therefore, deny summary judgment with respect to the fraud count lodged against Eidsness.
L & H Aireo, Inc.’s action against Eidsness rests on an underlying disputed fact— that L & H Aireo made the absence of any acquaintance between the officers of Rapis-tan Corp. and the arbitrators an express condition for L & H Airco’s entry into a stipulation to include Manning and other Rapistan officers as additional defendants in the arbitration proceeding. It strikes me that expressly conditioning a stipulation for the inclusion of additional individual defendants on their being unacquainted with the arbitrator would be highly unusual, but if the stipulation was indeed made on that condition, then it seems to me that Eidsness had a duty not to fraudulently misrepresent that the condition had been met. In other words, if Eidsness knew that Mi-chaud had worked for Rapistan and had gone fishing with Manning and other corporate officers, he breached a duty of fairness to the adversary by entering into the stipulation on his client’s behalf because a lawyer’s execution of the agreement carries with it an implicit representation that it is the client’s position that the condition is met and that the lawyer does not personally know otherwise. If a lawyer enters into such a stipulation knowing that the condition is not and cannot be met, it seems to me that the lawyer’s conduct has *383gone far beyond a lawyer’s obligation to the client and that concealment of the information which makes performance of the condition impossible amounts to intentional fraudulent misrepresentation.
If, on the other hand, Manning told Eidsness that Manning and Michaud were not acquainted, then Eidsness did not breach a duty to the adversary because, as the majority observes, a lawyer has no duty to decide whether the client is truthful. The representation implicit in the lawyer’s execution of the stipulation is only that the stipulation is consonant with the position of the client and the lawyer has no personal knowledge to the contrary. Thus, the count alleging negligent misrepresentation should be dismissed.
Finally, if the underlying fact does not exist — if the stipulation was not expressly conditioned on the absence of any acquaintance between the officers of Rapistan and the arbitrators, there can be no liability regardless what the lawyer knew, for the lawyer has no affirmative duty to protect the interest of the client’s adversary. The absence, however, of any affirmative duty to ferret out and disclose information to the adversary does not, in my view, excuse a lawyer’s deliberately misleading the adversary by fraudulent misrepresentation whether the misrepresentation is explicit or implicit.