Court Opinion

ID: 9687151
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:17:11.343422+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:24.385922
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I join that aspect of the majority opinion which reverses on Issue III, namely, a failure of disposing of collateral in a commercially reasonable manner.
However, I join Justice Sabers’ dissent in that I am firmly convinced that in small communities such as Miller, Hand County, South Dakota, customers of the bank should not sit on the bank’s case as a juror. Hand County is primarily an agricultural county, and there are only two banks located in Miller, a community of less than 3,000 people. An interrelationship between a debtor and creditor-bank is very personal. There have been many bank foreclosures throughout the Midwest, and Hand County is no exception. Times in the agricultural community have been tough. It is very difficult for a juror to owe a bank a substantial amount of money and sit on a case in a free and open state of mind, oblivious to the debt. Bank officers would testify who do business with them. When one considers the meaning of “interest,” as set forth in SDCL 15-14-6(5), it would reasonably encompass an interest in the outcome, and the depositors and the borrowers of the bank would have an interest in an outcome of the VonEye loan. Therefore, on challenge for cause for all of the jurors holding a customer relationship with this small-town bank, where customers know the officers very well, and the officers are keenly aware of their relationships with the *639customers, and there is a direct bearing on the bank’s fiscal soundness, not to mention its practices, five eventual jurors should have been stricken from the jury panel. By doing so, the VonEyes would have had, without any doubt whatsoever, a jury that had no alliance or allegiance with one of the parties to the lawsuit.
Also, I join Justice Sabers in his dissent on Issue II, namely, that the trial court should not have granted a directed verdict against the VonEyes on their cause of action pleaded for breach of an obligation of good faith concerning commercial transactions under SDCL 57A-1-203. Under the evidence presented in this case, there is a statutorily implied obligation of good faith. First Nat’l Bank in Libby v. Twombly, 689 P.2d 1226 (Mont.1984). Good faith is defined under SDCL 57A-1-201(19) as being “honesty in fact in the conduct or transaction concerned.” Enough evidence was presented so that the jury should have been permitted to bring its collective judgment into play on the bank’s general obligation of good faith. “Thus, there are over 50 years of compelling precedent that this reviewing Court must examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party on a motion for directed verdict and to give said nonmoving party the benefit of all reasonable inferences therefrom.” Lovell v. Oahe Elec. Coop., 382 N.W.2d 396, 406 (S.D.1986) (Henderson, J., dissenting).