Court Opinion

ID: 9608848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:18:21.056599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:57.953965
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
*352I dissent, believing this court should not volunteer a decision that a telephone conversation, a letter and the silence of defendant constitute an enforceable modification of a written, signed contract. First, the evidence appears to be inadmissible under the parol evidence rule. Second, it is not our function to decide matters on the merits in affirming an order denying a motion for summary judgment.
Would the main opinion conclude that there was a modified contract had there been only a telephone call? Does putting the substance of that call on paper and sending it through the mail make that which was inadmissible admissible? Haven’t we departed from the parol evidence rule by concluding that such evidence effectively can vary the terms of a signed, written instrument ?
The evidence presented by plaintiff, which the main opinion says creates a new contract is, in substance and effect, an assertion by plaintiff that “I agree to the terms of the contract I signed, but I intend to breach it. If you terminate the contract because of my breach, I will use that very breach to sue you for damages for terminating the contract under a provision therein allowing you to so terminate it. In the meantime; you must keep on hand enough petroleum to satisfy any order I may make for the accumulated amount of gallonage represented by the amount I did not order because of my breach.”
It is difficult to understand how such a position taken could be supported by any consideration or how it could create a new contract under established principles relat- • ing to offer and acceptance. Even though we ignore such fundamentals and assume, arguendo, that there was a counteroffer, how could we find an enforceable contract here, where, through indefiniteness, it is impossible to determine whether the plaintiff agreed to take 19,999 gallons per month, or 1 gallon per month, or any other definite amount per month, and where it is impossible to determine, even, in what months the plaintiff will deign to order any gallon-age or none at all.
This case is here on interlocutory appeal from an order denying a motion for summary judgment. It is not much unlike a case under the old practice where an appeal was taken from the overruling of a general demurrer. Our function in determining whether the trial court erred in denying the motion for summary judgment is to take a look at the record and if we are convinced that the facts adduced up to the time the motion was made reflect a genuine issue of fact, we simply should affirm the lower court and let a jury or a court sitting without a jury determine the facts in favor of one or the other of the litigants. In volunteering that a contract was created under the facts presented by the plaintiff, we not only invite a jury to think that the facts we mention in our de-*353cisión are true, but in my opinion we encourage them to accept them as true, even though they may discount the plaintiff entirely. It seems to me that a simple order affirming or reversing an order denying a motion for summary judgment, together with a simple recital of the facts, without adjudicating the case on the merits up to the time of the making of the motion, would exhaust our appellate function and in no way, even indirectly, could influence the fact finder below.
The motion should have been granted.