Court Opinion

ID: 9545094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:05:49.884065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:03.953569
License: Public Domain

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
TAYLOR, Justice.
By petition for rehearing respondents urge reconsideration of propositions advanced by them in their original brief. Their assertion that the effect of this decision is to give the choice of remedies to the wrongdoer, is not a correct application of the decision. The effect of the decision is to require a vendor, seeking specific performance of a preliminary “receipt and agreement to purchase” real estate, which— except for the payment of the one thousand dollars “deposit and earnest money”— remains wholly executory, with possession-still in the vendors, to show that the remedy of damages, for some reason, is not adequate, speedy, complete, or equitable. Petitioners cite Koch v. Glenn, 53 Idaho 761, 27 P.2d 870 (1933), wherein this court said that upon breach of a contract by the vendees, the vendors had three remedies: (1) rescission; (2) specific performance; or (3) damages. That case is not in point here. There, the vendors, after default of the vendees, took possession of the property and brought action for damages against the vendees. Specific performance was not sought in that case and nothing was said therein as to what proof would have been necessary to support a decree for specific performance, had such been sought.
*304Petitioners again urge the majority rule that specific performance is available to a vendor upon breach by the vendee of a contract for the sale of real estate. The reason for refusing to apply that rule in this case was amply developed in the original opinion.
In opposition to the rule that a court of equity will not ordinarily specifically enforce a contract requiring a long period of supervision, petitioners cite Locklear v. Tucker, 69 Idaho 84, 203 P.2d 380 (1949) and McCandless v. Schick, 85 Idaho 509, 380 P.2d 893 (1963). The Locklear case was distinguished in the original opinion. McCandless v. Schick was also an action brought by the vendee, not by the vendor, and the adequacy of the remedy at law was not considered, in that case.
Petitioners specifically object to the conclusion of fact in the original opinion that the vendees would he dependent upon income from the farm to make the annual payments. It is true, the record does not reveal the financial ability of the vendees, and the contract did give them the option to pay the balance in three payments. However, payments over a period of 18 years was provided for and the court could not enforce earlier performance. Should a breach occur on the part of the purchasers during that period, by reason of inability to pay, the vendors’ remedy would be by action for breach of contract- — as Justice McFadden said in McCandless v. Schick. In such event the vendors would have to recoup by resort to the land. The court could not, in terms, enforce its judgment.
Neither in their original briefing nor upon this petition for rehearing do the respondents assert, or offer to show, that their remedy by way of damages would be inadequate, untimely, incomplete, or in any respect inequitable. They do not assert that they could not be made whole by way of damages. Apparently they want more than to he made whole. In urging that specific performance is available, as a matter of right, to the vendor in a case such as this, petitioners assert that this decision confuses and jeopardizes the law relating to land contracts. Such reasoning ignores the basic rule that equity will not intervene when the remedy at law is adequate, speedy and complete. This basic rule is as old as the jurisdiction of equity. 30 C.J.S. Equity §§ 7, 19, 20; I.C. § 73-116.
Petition denied.
McFADDEN, C. J., and SMITH, J., concur.
McQUADE, J., dissents.