Court Opinion

ID: 9547697
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:50:36.194331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:57.548858
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
dissenting.
I would affirm the judgment of the superior court in all respects.
I
A. The parties’ property settlement agreement entered into on April 10, 1979 clearly contemplated that Norman Stone would carry through on the existing agreement under which he was to sell the Hawaii condominium for $125,000.00 with a closing date of July 30,1980. The trial court found that Norman breached his obligation to timely close the sale of the condominium. The court imposed as a remedy for this breach an obligation to pay interest on the sale proceeds due Marguerite, from the date they should have been paid until they actu*588ally were paid. This remedy seems to me to be entirely appropriate and practical.
The majority opinion, however, takes the position that Norman did not have the obligation to carry through on the sale at any particular time. Apparently the majority is of the view that Norman could delay the sale for as long as he wanted. By so doing he could also delay indefinitely his obligation to pay Marguerite the sum she was entitled to while benefitting by the appreciation in value of the unit and by living in it. In my view that is an obviously unreasonable reading of the parties’ agreement.
B. The trial court found that one consequence of Norman’s breach of his obligation to conclude the sale of the Hawaiian condominium on time was the initiation of a lawsuit in Hawaii by Marguerite in order to protect her interest in the sale proceeds. The trial court therefore awarded to Marguerite as damages caused by Norman’s breach the sum of $3,284.20 representing the attorney’s fees incurred by Marguerite in Hawaii. The majority opinion concludes that the trial court’s finding in this regard “finds no support in the record and is thus clearly erroneous.’’ That, however, is not an accurate characterization of the record for Marguerite directly testified that one of the purposes for which she paid her Hawaiian attorney was to protect her rights to the sale proceeds.1
C. In awarding damages an effort should be made to put the injured party in as good a position as he or she would have been in had the contract been fully performed. Green v. Koslosky, 384 P.2d 951, 952 (Alaska 1963). If Norman had performed as agreed the sale of the condominium would have taken place as scheduled on July 30, 1979. Marguerite would have had her $22,500.00 at that time and would not have initiated a separate lawsuit in Hawaii and incurred attorney’s fees therein. The judgment of the superior court awarding Marguerite interest on the $22,500.00 and damages for the attorney’s fees she incurred in Hawaii does no more than place her as closely as can be done in the position that she would have been in had Norman performed his obligation.
II
Since under the disposition made by the superior court, with which I agree, Marguerite received an affirmative recovery of $4,408.04, there is no basis for concluding that the court erred in awarding her attorney’s fees pursuant to the schedule set forth in Civil Rule 82 on this sum.
III
Nothing in Civil Rule 60(b) precludes the result reached by the superior court. Appellant has not argued that the court violated that rule and the majority opinion has acknowledged “that this issue need not be resolved to reach the limited issues presented on appeal.”
Parties often have their contracts entered as consent judgments. A consent judgment is
“one based on the consent or compromise agreement between the parties. A compromise or a consent judgment is a bilateral contract wherein the parties adjust their differences by mutual consent.... ”
Continental Insurance Company v. Bayless & Roberts, Inc., 608 P.2d 281, 295 (Alaska 1980) quoting from Parkerson v. R-5 Inc., 305 So.2d 592, 595 (La.App.1974).2 While *589parties may give an agreement the attributes of a judgment by having it entered as such, that does not eliminate the need to interpret the agreement in order to determine what it, and therefore the judgment, requires the parties to do.3
Here the court interpreted the parties’ agreement, and thus the decree, to require Norman to conclude the sale of the condominium as scheduled in the contract of sale and held that Norman had failed in this obligation. Having thus found that Norman had violated the decree the court was free to impose a remedy for that violation. The trial court did not grant relief from the decree, and therefore Civil Rule 60(b) is not here involved. What the court did was to determine what the decree meant, and enforce it in accordance with that meaning.

. Marguerite was asked and answered the following questions:
Q. Prior to the June 30 deadline passing, you had no indication from anyone that the condominium wasn’t going to sell at the $125,000.00_
A. No I didn’t.
Q. ... figure in accordance with the agreement?
A. I had no idea.
Q. Now you paid certain sums to an attorney in Hawaii to protect your rights to these monies?
A. Yes, I have.

. In Continental Insurance Company v. Bayless & Roberts, Inc., 608 P.2d 281, 295 (Alaska 1980), we cited Comment, Consent Judgments, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 1314, 1316 (1959) as generally describing the nature of consent judgments. The comment states in part on page 1316:
*589The courts seem to regard a consent judgment as a facility available to the parties as a matter of right by which they may imbue their contractual compromises with certain consequences of judgments.

. If the construction of a consent judgment is drawn in question in a subsequent proceeding, appeal should lie from any determination made by a judge other than the one who entered the consent judgment. Similarly, a subsequent determination made by the judge who rendered the original judgment should be appealable if he was not previously required to consider the meaning of the judgment. In both cases, the trial court proceeding resembles one involving the construction of a contract. If, however, a judgment is construed by a judge who, at the time of its entry, was required to consider its meaning, it appears unlikely that the appellate court would reject the judge’s interpretation of his own intent unless such interpretation could not reasonably have been contemplated by the parties.
Comment, Consent Judgments, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 1314, 1323 (1959). (Emphasis added; footnotes omitted).