Court Opinion

ID: 9851841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:20:26.812184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:16.519328
License: Public Domain

ROONEY, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with that said in the majority opinion except for the direction to appellants to pay to appellee bank the July 1, 1982 payment made by Coffman and Fireside Partners. Appellants were not parties to the transaction by which the appellee bank loaned money to the other defendants. Appellants should not be required at their peril to inquire into the source of money used to pay an installment on an obligation owed to them. Illustration: X sells an automobile to Y with payment to be made on installments. X need not inquire, when each payment is made, whether or not Y obtained the money through fraud, theft, etc. I cannot agree with the setting of such a precedent. There is no proper legal theory by which appellants are made insurers of appellee bank’s loan.
To label the payment made to appellants by defendants other than appellee bank as a “windfall” is an improper, indirect attack on the liquidated damage provision of the agreement between appellants and the other defendants. Appellee bank was not “unjustly” enriched.
“The mere fact that a third person benefits from a contract between two other persons does not make such third person liable in quasi contract, unjust enrichment, or restitution. * * * ” 66 Am. Jur.2d Restitution and Implied Contracts, § 16, p. 960 (1973).
See Eightway Corporation v. Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh, 94 Misc.2d 274, 404 N.Y.S.2d 302 (1978); McGrath v. Hilding, 41 N.Y.2d 625, 394 N.Y.S.2d 603, 363 N.E.2d 328 (1977); Haggard Drilling, Inc. v. Greene, 195 Neb. 136, 236 N.W.2d 841 (1975).
I would reverse in all respects.