Court Opinion

ID: 9664674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:25:25.490644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:08.477051
License: Public Domain

HUGHES, Justice
(concurring).
I agree that the provision for liquidated damages is invalid, but not for the reasons stated in the opinion of Judge Gray.
The general rule in the event a tenant abandons the premises and refuses to pay the agreed rents being that the landlord need make no effort to relet the premises and may recover, as his damages, the full amount of such rents, I cannot think of any reason for holding that an agreement that the tenant should pay less than the full amount of the recoverable damages penalizes the tenant.
In his work on Damages, Judge McCormick states:
“If the exact amount of damages which a court or jury would give is certainly predictable, there is little reason for at*360tempting to agree on the amount in advance, unless the parties wish to change the legal standard of recovery. (P. 603.) * * *
“A survey of the rules by which unliqui-dated damages are measured will disclose how few and limited are the cases where, as a practical matter, it is possible to foretell with any exactness the precise amount or within a narrow range the approximate amount of damages to which the injured party will be entitled in the event of breach. It may be done in one case; that is, where the promise whose breach is anticipated is a promise to pay money. The law here limits the damages to legal interest, but within the range of the lawful maximum even here the damages, i. e., the interest collectible for detention of the money after maturity, may be stipulated, and this seems a true case of liquidated damages.” (P. 604.)
I see no distinction between the agreement here and the agreement to pay less than the rate of interest (damages) allowed by law for the retention of money.
As long as we have the vicious rule that landlords need make no effort to minimize the damages, as other litigants are generally required to do, agreements of the kind involved here should be regarded with great favor.
• I believe the liquidated damage clause in the present lease to be unenforceable only because it applies to numerous and minor covenants of the lease as to some of which the amount of damages agreed upon is clearly disproportionate to the amount of anticipated damages. IS American Jurisprudence, page 686.