Court Opinion

ID: 9545593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:15:57.540661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:09.045273
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring):
I fully concur in the court’s opinion in this perplexing case. I write separately only to offer some further observations.
Preliminarily, I reiterate the important lesson of C.J. Realty, Inc. v. Willey, 758 P.2d 923 (Utah Ct.App.1988): A signed writing may be a sufficient “note or memorandum” of an agreement to satisfy the Statute of Frauds, even though that “note or memorandum” may contain ambiguities that require resort to extrinsic evidence to clarify the parties’ intent. Thus, in C.J. Realty we held that a signed memorandum of a finder’s arrangement satisfied the Statute of Frauds, even though it was ambiguous concerning which particular property or properties were subject to the agreement. Id. at 928. The basis for our holding was that
[t]he contract includes the critical terms of a finder’s agreement: it identifies the finder, the finder’s clients, the property owner who will owe a commission to the finder if a transaction is closed with any of the finder’s clients, and the commission rate.
Id. Significantly, all of these terms were set forth in the document signed “by the party to be charged therewith.” Utah Code Ann. § 25-5-4 (1989).
In this case, the pivotal “note or memorandum” signed “by the party to be charged therewith” is Goddard’s letter of August 9, 1985, responding to Polcha’s letter of August 7. Goddard’s letter constitutes an acceptance of the terms set forth in Polcha’s letter, except Polcha’s proposal for a 5% commission. Taken together, these two letters constitute a sufficient “note or memorandum” of a finder’s agreement, with only minimal ambiguity. The letters establish the finder, Polcha and/or Machan Hampshire Properties, Ltd.; the finder’s client, the estate of James Campbell; the property owner who will owe a commission, Goddard and/or the company for whom he acted as president; and.the commission rate, 4%. However, no other clients are even hinted at in these key documents and I discern no ambiguity in that regard which would permit Polcha an opportunity to prove that Birtcher was also his client. Any conceivable ambiguity concerning Birtcher’s status was definitively put to rest with Goddard’s letter of September 6 accepting certain unspecified clients, and creating an obvious ambiguity as to them, but unqualifiedly rejecting Birtcher.
Of course, the real problem in this case is that Polcha set about, in his various “registration” letters and otherwise, in reliance on an agreement he obviously felt he had with Goddard. It was that initial agreement which should have been reduced to *237writing and signed by the parties. That agreement could easily have spelled out, in addition to commission rate and the like, details of the client registration process, including either a provision requiring express acceptance of claimed clients or, more likely, a provision that clients would be deemed accepted if not expressly rejected within a stated time period. Against the background of such an agreement, Polcha’s assorted letters would have had greater meaning and clear legal significance, instead of being generated, as they were, in a legal vacuum, leaving Polcha without an enforceable contract as to Birtcher.
While this may seem a harsh result, it does not require our apology. The very adoption of a statute of frauds reflects the Legislature’s considered judgment that, with certain kinds of very important arrangements, it is preferable to invalidate a few otherwise legitimate agreements because they were not written than to burden the system and the citizenry with claims premised on bogus, unwritten agreements.