Court Opinion

ID: 9733064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:51:56.871185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:38.099927
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in re-suit).
Although I agree with the result of this opinion, I do not agree on the discourse of the validity of an implied warranty of accuracy. There are approximately 500 words dedicated to the author’s work product on that theory. It is totally unnecessary in deciding this case. Simply put, we are not deciding this case on such a theory. Quite to the contrary, we áre deciding that the unambiguous language of the contract before us defeats an implied warranty claim.
When this Court has decided cases in the past pertaining to this type of action, we never alluded to — nor cited — nor adopted United States v. Spearin, 248 U.S. 132, 39 S.Ct. 59, 63 L.Ed. 166 (1918). We did not sanction Spearin as authority.
Author also quotes the holding in Metropolitan Sewerage Com’n. v. R.W. Const., 241 N.W.2d 371, 379 (Wis.1976). In our previous decisions on this subject, we have never mentioned or cited to this case.
If the reader will peruse Candee Const. v. Dept. of Transportation, 447 N.W.2d 339, 345 (S.D.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1067, 110 S.Ct. 1785, 108 L.Ed.2d 786 (1990), it will be noted that neither Spearin nor the Metropolitan Sewerage case was cited in Candee. It is obvious that this Court chose not to adopt the implied warranty of accuracy theory.
What must the South Dakota Department of Transportation express, in its future contracts, to escape this obiter dicta?
As the Midwest Dredging Co. v. McAninch Corp. case in the Iowa Supreme Court case in 1988 expresses: “No implied warranty will arise when the government, in good faith, presents all the information it has on subsurface conditions to the contractor.” Further, the Iowa court held: “As a general rule, if the construction contract places that risk with one party, such party must absorb the loss if unexpected conditions arise.”
Obiter dicta here opens a crack in the door, nay, creates the opportunity, for cost*48ly litigation for South Dakotans, fore, I concur in result only. There-