Court Opinion

ID: 6553085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-19 22:30:46.048363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:56:09.579659
License: Public Domain

JUDITH ROGERS, Judge, concurring. I concur with the majority in the result reached in this matter. However, I write separately because I do not believe that this Court should have addressed the merits of this case. The parties before this court have asked us to construe the meaning of the word “possession” in a contract for the sale of real estate. Yet, they have failed to provide an abstract of the contract in question for our review. Different clauses of a contract must be read together and the contract construed so that all of its parts harmonize, if that is at all possible. Boatmen’s Arkansas, Inc. v. Farmer, 66 Ark. App. 240, 242 (1999); Pate v. U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co., 14 Ark. App. 133, 685 S.W.2d 530 (1985). The intention of the parties is to be gathered not from particular words and phrases but from the whole context of the agreement. Farmer, supra. Although the parties have provided quotations of the most relevant provisions of the contract in their pleadings and briefs, without the full contract before us we cannot adequately determine whether the construction which we afford the terms in question will harmonize with the entirety of the contract. Parties have an affirmative obligation to abstract those portions of the record relevant to the points on appeal. Moncrief v. State, 325 Ark. 173, 925 S.W.2d 776 (1996). In the instant case, the parties have failed to abstract the most important piece of evidence before the court: the very contract which is at issue. When an abstract is deficient, the lower court’s judgment must be affirmed. Owens v. State, 325 Ark. 93, 924 S.W.2d 459 (1996). The abstract is deficient in this matter because of the failure to include the contract under construction. Therefore, I would affirm the judgment of the lower court.