Court Opinion

ID: 9788660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:14:29.146908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:15.725893
License: Public Domain

Justice EISMANN,
dissenting.
The majority holds that the defendants can be hable for failing to make a loan they had no legal obligation to make. Because there is no logical basis for that holding, I respectfully dissent.
It is undisputed that the Defendants did not have any legal obligation to make a loan to the Plaintiff. Idaho Code § 9-505(5), the statute of frauds, provides that a “promise or commitment to lend money or to grant or extend credit in an original principal amount of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) or more, made by a person or entity engaged in the business of lending money or extending credit,” is invalid “unless the same or some note or memorandum thereof, be in writing and subscribed by the party charged, or by his agent.” There was no note or memorandum signed by either of the Defendants in which it made a promise or commitment to lend any money to the Plaintiff. The only signed document was the lock-in agreement, and it clearly stated, “This is not a loan approval or loan commitment.” The majority agrees that “the lock-in agreement does not constitute a commitment to lend.”
Regardless of whether the Defendants were at one time willing to make the loan, or even had approved the loan and had prepared the necessary documents to close the transaction, they never signed any document *894promising or committing to lend money to the Plaintiff. Likewise, they never made a loan to the Plaintiff. They only agreed that if they made a loan it would be at a 5.125% interest rate. As a result, the statute of frauds rendered any alleged agreement to lend money invalid and unenforceable. Lettunich v. Key Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 141 Idaho 362, 109 P.3d 1104 (2005). Even though the Plaintiff could not enforce any agreement by the Defendants to lend him money, and even though the Defendants never made a loan to the Plaintiff, the majority holds that the Defendants can be required to pay damages for failing to lend the Plaintiff money at a 5.125% interest rate. That analysis is simply devoid of logic.