Court Opinion

ID: 9532966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:26:44.447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:52.852503
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Justice
(dissenting).
I am unable to follow the reasoning of the prevailing opinion, which in effect holds that there was no issue of material fact concerning an oral agreement. It is my view that there was substantial evidence from which it could have been found there was a definite though not detailed oral contract established by the telephone conversation between defendant Leavey and plaintiff Trautwein on November 29, 1967, by which the entire ranch and personal property, including livestock, was to be sold for $2,300,000 with Leavey having the privilege of selling livestock not to exceed $20,000 before actual transfer on December IS, 1967, such amount not to be deducted from the purchase price. This constituted an issuable fact and was a matter for the jury, which the defendants had demanded, and not one for summary judgment. Even so, the nonexistence of an oral contract was only one of two bases mentioned by the trial court as predication for its holding, which if correct on either ground must be affirmed. Hence, the second reason must be examined.
Plaintiffs do not contradict defendants’ contention that the oral contract is not enforceable unless there is some note or memorandum in writing, which would take it out of the statute of frauds. This court has long adhered to the principle that in order to satisfy such requirement the “note or memorandum” must contain the terms of the contract with such certainty that its essentials can be known without resort to parol evidence.1 Of course, the “note or memorandum” need not be contained in a single document but may be in separate writings, which when taken together meet the requirements of the statute.2
Plaintiffs argue that the signed documents (the exclusive listing agreement given by Leavey; the November 30, 1967, letter from Leavey to Murray concerning the commission to be paid him when the sale had been completed “and the escrow closed”; the December 8, 1967, telephone-telegram from Leavey to Trautwein and Woods, rejecting any and all offers) together with a handwritten but unsigned paper, designated by plaintiffs as the “escrow,” stated with particularity the terms of the sale. They maintain that the parties disagree as to whether the handwritten “escrow” was a “written memorandum of a completed oral contract” and that the conflict about what the parties intended was a question of material fact for the jury. They further insist that since this was properly a matter for the jury’s determination the trial court erred in not even considering the “escrow” in arriving at its decision, a criticism scarcely borne out by the record.
It is apparently true that the trial court did not view the “escrow” as a “note or memorandum” which might properly be considered, having stated in its May 22, 1969, letter to counsel:
“Taking together all writings here involved — the Offer to Purchase Agreement, the Amendment to Offer to Purchase Agreement, the telegrams, the letter to Murray — make out only a hopeless jumble, not any sort of enforceable agreement.”
However, the court was aware of and weighed the “escrow,” speaking of it in the letter as a longhand draft of a proposed agreement which was later typed, appeared to satisfy Leavey, and was entitled “Offer to Purchase Agreement.” Thus, the error, if any, was not in failing to consider the *782“escrow” but rather in tacitly rejecting it as a writing within the meaning of § 16-1, W.S.19S7, C. 1965.
Plaintiffs argue that a memorandum of an oral agreement sufficient to satisfy the statute of frauds may consist of several documents, not all of which need be signed by the party charged, if the signed writings refer to the unsigned writings, and if it appears from examination of all of the signed writings that they were signed with reference to the transactions in issue, and insist that the word “escrow” in the signed letter from Leavey to Murray “could not possibly have referred to anything other than the handwritten instrument which is almost entirely devoted to the terms of the ‘escrow’ and in which the word ‘escrow’ is used more than twenty times.” Defendants’ principal response to this thesis is reference to a quotation in Mead v. Leo Sheep Co., 32 Wyo. 313, 232 P. 511, 514, of an earlier pronouncement in Burley-Winter Pottery Co. v. Onken Bros. & West Co., 26 Wyo. 287, 183 P. 747, 749, quoting 20 Cyc. 258, that:
“ ‘In order to render an oral contract falling within the scope of the statute of frauds enforceable by action, the memorandum thereof must state the contract with such certainty that its essentials can be known from the memorandum itself, or by reference contained in it to some other writing, without recourse to parol proof to support them.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.)
and a quotation in the Mead case from Thayer v. Luce, 22 Ohio St. 62:
“ ‘If one only of such papers be signed by the party to be charged in the action, the rule seems to be that special reference must be made therein to those papers that are not so signed; but if the several papers relied on be signed by such party, it is sufficient if their connection and relation to the same transaction can be ascertained and determined by inspection and comparison.’ ”
Defendants’ counsel thus contents himself and purports to dismiss the point by merely voicing an opinion that “the November 30 letter does not refer to the other documents, and hence the other documents, all unsigned, do not satisfy the statute.” Such unsupported statement, like that of the trial court in its letter to counsel, is unconvincing and insufficient to remove questions of fact. It is true that the use of the word “escrow” in the Leavey letter to Murray cannot categorically be denominated a “special reference” to the longhand writing by Adams, approved by Leavey, and later incorporated in the typed instrument entitled “Offer to Purchase Agreement.” Also the situation is somewhat complicated by Murray’s statement in his deposition that the escrow mentioned in the typed “Offer to Purchase Agreement” was the escrow referred to in Leavey’s letter to him. Nevertheless, the entire situation in this aspect of the case as disclosed by the pleadings, affidavits, and depositions, points up a genuine issue of material fact so that resolution of the controversy was one for the jury and therefore the entry of summary judgment was improper.

. Wallis v. Bosler, 70 Wyo. 129, 246 P.2d 771, 778; Mead v. Leo Sheep Co., 32 Wyo. 313, 232 P. 511, 514; Burley-Winter Pottery Co. v. Onken Bros. & West Co., 26 Wyo. 287, 183 P. 747, 749.

. Noland v. Haywood, 46 Wyo. 101, 23 P.2d 845, 848.