Court Opinion

ID: 9659754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:54:11.831519+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:11.395742
License: Public Domain

HECHT, Justice,
concurring on Motion for Rehearing.
My concurring opinion of February 21, 1990, is withdrawn, and this opinion substituted.
I agree with the Court’s result but wonder why it struggles so to reach it. The case is far simpler than the Court seems to think. The agreement between Criswell and European Crossroads, very simply, was that Criswell would prepare information to assist in the sale of European Crossroads’ property, for which European Crossroads would pay a fee of 1% of the sale price of the property at closing. Criswell alleges that he performed — that he prepared the promised information — and that European Crossroads breached — that it refused to pay the promised fee. Thus Cris-well contends that he is entitled to judgment.
European Crossroads’ contention that it does not owe Criswell a fee because its property was not sold as a condominium simply has no basis in the agreement. European Crossroads’ fee obligation was certainly not expressly conditioned on the sale of the property as a condominium, nor was any such condition implied, if indeed it legally could have been. Criswell agreed not only to prepare information for sale of the property specifically “on a condominium basis”, but also to “prepare and have avail*950able any and all necessary information that a proposed owner or owners would deem pertinent or desirable and/or prepare the information that he may desire at his request.” Thus Criswell agreed to provide information to assist any sale of the property, and if he performed that agreement, was entitled to be paid according to its terms.
Rules of construction may be necessary when the meaning of an agreement is ambiguous. This agreement is not ambiguous, and no party contends that it is. The Court’s resort to rules of construction, even to the point of straining over the significance of a semicolon, is unnecessary and improper.
Accordingly, I join the Court only in its judgment.