Court Opinion

ID: 9833208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:31:27.649306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:00.476689
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellees in an able motion for rehearing earnestly insist that, appellant having arbitrarily breached the contract, it was incumbent upon it, in order to relieve itself from liability for the full term of the contract, to plead and prove any or all conditions stipulated in the contract which would excuse it for its breach. As a general proposition, that is true, and undoubtedly applies to all conditions in the contract which would relieve appellant as against a full performance by it. However, several conditions were reserved in the contract for the express benefit of appellee Birmingham which would, if they occurred, relieve him from any further performance of the contract, regardless of the contingencies inserted for the benefit of appellant. The conditions inserted for the benefit of Birmingham and for his protection were conditions with which appellant had nothing to do and over which it had no control. The same rule which would require appellant to negative the conditions which would excuse it for a breach would, we think, require Birmingham, as a condition precedent to his recovery for water to be furnished during the remaining two years of the contract period, to show that he could furnish the water he contracted to furnish. This he did not undertake to do.
Nor does the rule that damages, certain to result from breach of contract, but merely .uncertain in amount, may be recovered, apply here. The amount of the damages so long as Birmingham could furnish appellant water during the contract period was definite and certain. If and when he was unable to supply the water contracted for, the damage ceased entirely. Based upon the contingencies reserved for the protection of appellee, therefore, the uncertainty was not as to the amount of the damage; but, if the supply did run short, the uncertainty then became one as to whether any further damages at all would accrue to appellee. Clearly, we think, appellee could not recover, under the conditions he reserved himself in the contract for his own benefit, for three years’ supply of water without some reasonable showing that he could furnish the water during that period.
From the record as presented, appellee was entitled to recover for the water contracted for up to the date of the trial. Ap-pellee has asked permission, in case his motion in other respects is overruled, to file a remittitur of the difference between the amount recovered and the amount due under the contract up to the date of the trial. If appellee desires to file such remittitur within ten days from this date, as so remitted the judgment of the trial court will be affirmed. Otherwise it will be reversed, and the cause remanded for another trial.
Granted in part and in part overruled.