Court Opinion

ID: 9531022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:06:24.612598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:19.579789
License: Public Domain

BROOK, Chief Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur in the majority’s affirmance of the trial court’s judgment, but I do so on different grounds.
Initially, I observe that the only parties to the release at issue are the Houins themselves: neither Milliser nor Safe-co/American States signed the release to manifest their agreement to its terms. Next, I respectfully take issue with the majority’s “viewing [of] the release against the backdrop of the letters to American Family” notwithstanding its conclusion that the release “on its face ... does not appear to be applicable to those persons or entities not parties to the document and the action from which the release arose.” Slip op. at 7. If a release document is indeed unambiguous, “the intent of the parties is to be determined by reviewing the language contained between the four corners of that instrument.” Estate of Spry, 749 N.E.2d at 1273.
In my view, the release is not unambiguous. In the first sentence of the document, the Houins purported to release from “all claims and demands” Milliser and Safeco/American States and their successors in interest “together with all other persons, corporations, associations, and partnerships!!.]” (Emphasis added.) In my view, the italicized phrase clearly refers to parties other than Milliser and Safeco/American States and their successors in interest. In the same sentence, however, the Houins mentioned that “the parties hereby released” denied and disputed legal liability for the Houins’ “injuries, damages and losses”; given that American Family never communicated with the Houins prior to the execution of the release, the “parties hereby released” can only refer to Milliser and Safe-co/American States. As our supreme court concluded in a factually similar case,
[t]hese contradictory references cloud the intent of the document. Consequently, parol evidence may be utilized to determine the parties’ true intentions respecting the document’s application. This, of course, necessitates that the entry of summary judgment be reversed and the case remanded for such a factual determination.
Huffman v. Monroe County Cmty. Sch. Corp., 588 N.E.2d 1264, 1267 (Ind.1992); cf. Estate of Spry, 749 N.E.2d at 1273 (“Language that releases ‘all’ people is clear unless other terms in the instrument are contradictory.”). Because the Houins’ release contains contradictory references, I would affirm the trial court’s denial of American Family’s summary judgment motion on this basis.