Court Opinion

ID: 9631597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:44:09.988465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:57.703050
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
I dissent. It seems to me that the main opinion has assumed a false premise: That plaintiff seeks recovery on an oral contract which admittedly was unenforceable under the Statute of Frauds, but for a written memorandum which took it out of that statute. The plaintiff did not seek recovery on that theory, but alleged a written contract between the Neys and Harrisons, in which the latter expressly agreed to pay a real estate commission to the broker. The plaintiff set forth the agreement and pleaded that “the defendants have failed and refused to pay the commission provided for in said agreement.” The plaintiff did not claim to be a party to that agreement, and as a matter of fact, was not a party thereto. No effort was made to amend the pleading mentioned. This case comes to us simply as a case where A agreed with B that he would pay C a commission. Such an agreement is not enforceable by C unless it has the elements of a contract for the benefit of a third party, — either the donee beneficiary type or -the creditor beneficiary type. There is no donee beneficiary type here since there is no indication that anyone intended the Harrisons to make a gift, and there is no creditor beneficiary type here since there is no indication whatever that Harrisons’ promise was made to satisfy any obligation or claim that the broker might have had' against the Neys.
This court in a unanimous decision has rejected the idea that a broker could enforce such a promise made between two *224■other persons to a contract where lie was not a party, and has gone so far as to say such a contract cannot be treated even as a memorandum for the purpose of taking an oral real estate broker’s employment contract out of the Statute of Frauds.1 That case is based on sound principles and should not be treated lightly or reversed, as the main opinion in effect has done. The rule that the majority opinion is laying down will emasculate the Statute of Frauds relating to brokers’ employment contracts, which, after this case, may be wholly oral if the reference, for many years customarily inserted in earnest money agreements, is made with respect to payment of a real •estate commission, — a reference found in a ■contract between others in which the broker is not a party, and found in a contract whose terms the broker could not enforce. The rule laid down by the main opinion, I am convinced, violates fundamental principles of contracts. I earnestly urge that we do not have to decide this case, nor can we justify the main opinion, on the basis •of an oral contract buttressed by a written memorandum, but can decide it simply on the basis of failure of pleading and proof, as we did in Taylor v. E. M. Royle Corp.,2 a case about which the main opinion casts ■doubt.

. Dipietro case cited in main opinion.

. 1 Utah 2d 175, 264 P.2d 279.