Court Opinion

ID: 9641911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:43:08.966871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:40.722519
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority holds that marking a judgment “satisfied” supplies any insufficiency of consideration when a lesser sum than justly owed is paid.
The issue arises because this Court has held firmly to the common law rule that acceptance of a lesser sum than that owed is, of itself, not sufficient consideration for an accord and satisfaction. The common law rule requires, in addition to the payment of such a lesser sum, a compromise of a genuine dispute about the amount owed.
The Court’s holding that, where a creditor marks a judgment “satisfied” upon the records of the court, he cannot move to strike because the satisfaction imparts a sufficiency of consideration, is certainly a reasonable rule and I concur with that holding.
*186I dissent, however, that this holding should be the law of the instant case.
The court of common pleas and the Superior Court both held that under existing law the acceptance of a lesser sum without a genuine dispute as to the amount owed is insufficient consideration for the satisfaction of a judgment.
In so doing they followed an entrenched line of Superior Court decisions and the distinct holding of this Court in Brunswick Corp. v. Levin, 442 Pa. 488, 276 A.2d 532 (1971), wherein now-Chief Justice O’Brien speaking, for an undivided Court, affirmed the common law rule stating:
The same elements are necessary to show the existence of an “accord and satisfaction” as to show the existence of any contract. There must be a “meeting of the minds.” Barry v. Caplin, 73 Pa.Super. 487 (1920). There must be consideration, which in the case of an accord and satisfaction, means that a reasonable dispute exists between the parties. As we explained in Law v. Mackie, 373 Pa. 212 at 221, 95 A.2d 656 (1953), citing Lucacher v. Kerson, 355 Pa. 79, 48 A.2d 857 (1946): “Where there is a dispute or disagreement between the debtor and creditor' as to their respective rights, a payment tendered in full satisfaction of the other’s claim operates as an accord and satisfaction if the payment is accepted and retained. On the other hand, in the absence of such a controversy, the payment of a part of the amount due under a contract, even though accepted by the creditor as in full satisfaction of the debt, does not work a discharge of the entire indebtedness, for the reason that there is no consideration for the creditor’s agreement that it should so operate.”
422 Pa. at 491, 276 A.2d at 533-34. These are hardly the words of driven epigones of Lord Coke. If the majority opinion in this case did no more than give a new source to supply sufficient consideration for an accord and satisfaction and provide a rule to enforce it, our time would have been well spent.
The opinion, however, ruminates in aporia, feigned or imagined, about the validity of the common law that sub*187sumes its holding. Tracing its provenance to old Lord Coke’s Reports the majority finds that “it may still have sound psychological roots in the content of executory promises” which I gather to mean, maybe it does not. See Majority Opinion at 110. I see no reason, in passing, to throw doubt on a settled principle of law, while saying “our law should neither invite litigation nor encourage its continuance.” See Majority Opinion at 110.
This is a case of an unfaithful servant and the majority rightly holds that he was invested with apparent authority. While a master must answer for loss inflicted by one wearing his apparent authority, that loss must be a legal one. If Mr. Smallhoover did- not give legally sufficient consideration under existing law, he suffered no loss, for he gave only what he was obliged to give. He did not give legally sufficient consideration unless he paid a lesser sum for a genuinely disputed debt. In his answer to the motion to strike, he raised that very issue; he argued that the original judgment was induced by fraud. He obviously knew the requirements of the rule and responded accordingly.
Cases such as this one are of rare occurrence because the law has been well settled. To my mind, under all the facts of this case, it is an injustice to alter or change that rule on the parties hereto. I would strike the “satisfaction” and remand the case to the court of common pleas to determine whether there was an accord and satisfaction under the long-standing law.
NIX, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.