Court Opinion

ID: 9734100
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:25:32.372039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:45.683392
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GOLDENHERSH, dissenting: I dissent. I would hold the exculpatory clause void as against public policy and reverse the judgment. The majority states, “Much of the power which plaintiff attributes to defendant rests on plaintiff’s unfounded assumption that defendant was the sole party with whom it could have dealt.” (95 HI. 2d at 73.) This is an unrealistic evaluation of the evidence in view of the fact that the exculpatory clause itself provides that “the term ‘Telephone Company’ shall include any or all Telephone Companies involved in this transaction, the Selling Company, the Publishing Companies, or any representative of said company or companies.” It is obvious that it would not have made any difference whether the plaintiff discussed the contracts with a representative of the Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation or L. M. Berry & Company; it was in any event doing business with the same entity, “the Telephone Company.” To reach any other conclusion is to exclude from consideration the facts as they actually exist. In order to invoke the protection of the exculpatory clause defendant should, at the least, be required to show some reasonable effort to perform its contractual obligations. To the contrary, so callous and indifferent was the conduct of the defendant here that it managed to omit plaintiff’s listing in the Geneseo directory for two consecutive years, 1976 and 1977. Justice would require, rather than enforcement of the exculpatory clause, that the plaintiff recover for actual damages for the one-year omission from the Freeport directory and exemplary damages for what appear to be the wilful omissions from the Geneseo directory.