Court Opinion

ID: 9740372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:33:30.139418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:15.079413
License: Public Domain

The following opinion was filed February 5, 1952:
Gehl, J.
(on motion for rehearing). We find nothing in plaintiff’s brief to convince us that we were wrong in determining that where one sues upon a written instrument and reaches beyond the writing for parol evidence of a contemporary arrangement to support a demand for relief which the terms of the paper do not afford him the court should receive such of the evidence as supports his claim and should not deny to the other party the right to establish other terms of the parol arrangement. Had the plaintiff brought a simple action at law for judgment upon the note everything which he said in his original brief and urges in that filed on this motion would apply, unless, of course, the defendant had presented a case for the application of sec. 116.20, Stats., or one within the other exceptions to the parol-evidence rule.
To reach our conclusion it is not necessary that we declare a new exception to the parol-evidence rule. Our opinion should not be construed as a declaration of one or as an abandonment of the rule that parol evidence may be introduced only with respect to aspects of the agreement which are not expressly covered by the writing, but not in contradiction of those terms of the agreement specifically stated in the writing. It should be read and considered only in connection with the facts here involved. Vinograd v. Travelers Protective Asso. 217 Wis. 316, 258 N. W. 787.
*194bWe might, probably we should, have made it more clear that we were in fact disposing of the question upon the doctrine of waiver. To admit defendant’s testimony as to the alleged contemporary oral arrangement as original testimony would probably be improper. But to permit plaintiff to give his version of a part of the arrangement gathered from conversation between the parties and to deny the defendant the privilege of giving his version of the entire oral arrangement would be manifestly unfair.
Our position might also have been made more clear had we anticipated plaintiff’s contention now made that “the notes and the pledge are wholly separate transactions. The notes are evidence of a debt. The pledge is a method of securing payment, and evidence or pleading as to one transaction cannot open the door to the admission of evidence to the other.” The answer to that contention lies in the fact that plaintiff seeks to enforce a pledge the terms of which are not contained in the note. It is he, not the defendant, who first ventured into “the other” oral transaction for parol proof to sustain his claim that it was agreed that the stock certificates were held by him as security for the debt evidenced by the notes. He asks the court to enforce the terms of the other transaction solely upon his offer to prove that to secure the payment of the notes defendant pledged the certificates and to deny to defendant the right to prove the rest of that transaction. We are asked to ignore the rule that when one party gives in evidence one part of a conversation with respect to a transaction the other party may give the whole thereof. Estate of Gilbert, 167 Wis. 291, 166 N. W. 442, 167 N. W. 447; Anderson v. Arpin Hardwood Lumber Co. 131 Wis. 34, 110 N. W. 788; 2 Jones, Evidence (2d ed.), p. 1340, sec. 715.

Nemo vinum habere atque bibere potest.

By the Court. — Motion for rehearing denied with costs.