Court Opinion

ID: 9553982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:38:35.333327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:42.883744
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting:
I join Justice Howe in concurring and dissenting as to part IV of the lead opinion. I find the logic of the lead opinion reasonable as to a basis for finding that Kimball’s obligations under the modified contract were considerably less than Tsem’s obligations to repair the elevator pursuant to its contract with Barton. However, I agree with Justice Howe that for such a rationale to provide a basis for affirmance, certain findings needed to be made by the trial court which were not made and upon which the evidence before us is conflicting.
Specifically, as Justice Howe separately notes, the record is devoid of the factual finding that Kimball and Tsern modified their elevator repair contract. Under our case law, “[t]rial courts are given primary responsibility for making determinations of fact” because trial judges are “in the best position to assess the credibility of witnesses and to derive a sense of the proceedings as a whole, something an appellate court cannot hope to gamer from a cold record.” State v. Pena, 869 P.2d 932, 935-36 (Utah 1994). The lead opinion ignores this allocation of responsibility between trial and appellate courts by supplying its own factual finding that a contract modification occurred. Even if we were to view the issue of whether a contract was modified as a question of law, we would assign the responsibility for initially making that highly fact-dependent determination to the trial court and give it a great deal of discretion in doing so. See id. at 937-39. In short, appellate courts should not usurp the freedom given to trial judges “to make decisions which appellate judges might not make themselves ab initio but will not reverse.” Id. at 937-38.
I understand that this case has dragged on and that the record is voluminous, as Justice Stewart notes, but none of that justifies our usurping the trial court’s legitimate role in an effort to produce, today, the result we think appropriate, even if we think the trial court might reach the same result after remand.
For the foregoing reasons, I join Justice Howe in voting for a remand of this case to permit the trial court to make new findings regarding the parties’ intent as to the meaning of the words “good working order.”