Court Opinion

ID: 9551832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:00:05.461624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:48.240676
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OF
LEVINSON, J.
I dissent.
The majority opinion would be relevant if the question presented in this appeal were whether the instruction actually given by the trial court constituted a comprehensive treatment of the law of contracts for personal services. However, as correctly stated in the majority opinion, the issue is “whether that portion of the instruction denied by the trial court was adequately covered by the instructions given.” In substance, the majority opinion argues as follows:
(1) The instruction actually given by the trial court is an incomplete statement of the law of contracts for personal services.
(2) It is undisputed that the requested instruction, as far as it goes, is an accurate statement of the law.
(3) Therefore, the instruction actually given does not adequately cover the requested instruction.
Such an argument is a non sequitur.
This court, in State v. Stuart, 51 Haw. 656, 660-61, 466 P.2d 444, 447 (1970), declared that:
where a given proposition of law is requested to be given in an instruction, the instruction may properly be refused where the same proposition is adequately covered in another instruction that is given. This is true even where the refused instruction is a correct statement of the law.
Accord, Kometani v. Heath, 50 Haw. 89, 98, 431 P.2d 931, 938 (1967). In Barretto v. Akau, 51 Haw. 383, 399, 463 P.2d 917, 926 (1969), we said:
The cautionary statement of the dissent in Young v. Price would appear to be applicable here. ‘[T]he fact that more specific instructions are offered does not re*184quire the trial court to accept them and reject slightly more general instructions or give cumulative instructions on the same point.’ Young v. Price, 50 Haw. 430, 450, 442 P.2d 67, 79 (1968) (Levinson and Marumoto, JJ., dissenting).
It is therefore clear that if the trial court’s instructions on the law of contracts for personal services substantially covered the omitted portion of the requested instruction, there was no need to give the requested instruction in its entirety. The appellant urges that the trial court’s instructions failed to alert the jury to the required “meeting of the minds” as to the nature of the services to be rendered and the amount of compensation to be paid. The argument is meaningless unless the appellant further demonstrates that the omitted portion of the requested instruction would have remedied the alleged defect in the instructions actually given. The appellant has not done so.
The omitted portion of the requested instruction offers no more insight into the nature of “meeting of the minds” than do the instructions actually given. The portion concerning “the essential agreed-on elements of a contract for personal services” is mere surplusage. The trial court instructed the jury that in order for plaintiff (appellee) to recover, he must prove by a preponderance of the evidence “that pursuant to that agreement he rendered the service agreed upon. . . .” (Emphasis added.) To parrot that the “essential agreed-on elements of a contract” include “the services to be rendered by the plaintiff to or on behalf of defendant” would approach echolalia. Nowhere does the appellant claim that there existed any dispute as to “the time in which such services are to be performed.” Furthermore, the trial court instructed the jury that in the absence of a finding that the parties agreed upon a 5 percent finder’s fee, “then you must return a verdict for defendant because an agreement to ‘take care of’ plaintiff is merely an agreement to agree in the future and does not constitute an enforceable contract.” Reciting that “the compensation to be *185paid by defendant to plaintiff” is another “essential agreed-on element” sheds no additional light on the subject.
A word is in order concerning the phantom-like “ambiguity” created by the term “defined herein,” in light of the trial court’s deletion of the appellant’s requested instruction. The instruction read “herein,” not “hereunder.” Thus, the obvious referent is the instruction as a whole, rather than only that portion which followed. The court’s instructions as given do define the term “contract,” and the omitted portion of the requested instruction would not have clarified it.
I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.