Court Opinion

ID: 9449144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:58:41.623195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:43.712065
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur with respect to Edgar Hutche-son but I dissent so far as his wife Lena is concerned.
Three fundamental propositions are important here:
a. Edgar’s and Lena’s causes of action in Arkansas are separate and distinct. Little Rock Gas & Fuel Co. v. Coppedge, 1915, 116 Ark. 334, 172 S.W. 885, 889; Missouri Pac. Transp. Co. v. Miller, 1957, 227 Ark. 351, 299 S.W.2d 41; Bailey v. Stewart, 1963, 236 Ark. 80, 364 S.W.2d 662. And the Miller case discloses that Arkansas’ highest court entertains a considerate attitude toward the independence of married women’s rights.
b. This case comes to us as an appeal from a summary judgment. It is not an appeal after a full hearing on the merits. This court repeatedly has made known its strict attitude toward a summary judgment. We have described it as a “harsh remedy” and as an “extreme rem*824edy”. We have restricted its use to situations where the defendant “is entitled to its allowance beyond all doubt” and where his entitlement is shown “with such clarity as to leave no room for controversy”. We have said that “all reasonable doubts touching the existence of a genuine issue as to a material fact must be resolved against the party moving for summary judgment”. United Pac. Ins. Co. v. United States ex rel. Mississippi Valley Equip. Co., 8 Cir., 1961, 296 F.2d 160, 165; United States v. Farmers Mut. Ins. Ass’n, 8 Cir., 1961, 288 F.2d 560, 562; Traylor v. Black, Sivalls & Bryson, Inc., 8 Cir., 1951, 189 F.2d 213, 216, and cases cited. Compare Thomason v. Hospital T. V. Rentals, Inc., 8 Cir., 1959, 272 F.2d 263. This very panel in another case presented at the same term of court has in general reaffirmed this approach. Doza v. American Nat’l Ins. Co., 8 Cir., 1963, 314 F.2d 230.
c. The Supreme Court of Arkansas has enunciated for that state the rule that a release, to be effective, must be supported by consideration and that absence of consideration renders a release unenforceable:
“A release like any other contract, must be supported by some consideration”. Golf Shaft & Block Co. v. O’Keefe, 1940, 200 Ark. 529, 139 S.W.2d 691, 693.
“Lack of consideration, misrepresentation amounting to fraud, and also duress may be shown to set aside a release, and these are questions of fact”. Creswell v. Keith, 1961, 233 Ark. 407, 344 S.W.2d 854, 855.
The record on this appeal is reviewed properly only with full awareness of this Arkansas liberality toward married women’s rights, of our own strict approach to summary judgments, and of the Arkansas requirement that there be consideration for a release. Such a review convinces me that the majority opinion is right so far as Edgar’s cause of action is concerned but it leaves me troubled as to Lena’s.
Edgar. The material on which the disposition of the motion for summary judgment was based included the discovery deposition of the claims adjuster for the defendant’s insurer. He produced the original accident report submitted by Lena to the insurance company. This contained Lena’s statement that the Hutcheson automobile was driven by Lena but owned by Edgar. I find nothing in the present record which controverts the existence of an element of ownership of the car in Edgar or, to put it another way, I find nothing in the record which contraindicates the defendant’s and the plaintiffs’ acceptance of this fact of ownership. It then follows that everything which the majority have said so well in their opinion has appropriate application to Edgar and that the entry of summary judgment with respect to his presently asserted claim for deprival of his wife’s consortium and of her services in the operation of their grocery store-filling station was proper.
Lena. But I am not at all convinced that the same result necessarily follows with respect to Lena. My lack of conviction here arises from the failure of the present record to show, without dispute, that legal consideration passed to Lena in return for her execution of the release. Edgar apparently was the registered and actual owner of the automobile; at least there is some evidence to that effect. There is evidence that the amount paid by the defendant was directed precisely to the estimated cost of repairs for property damage. Lena in her deposition stated that the garage which had submitted the lowest estimate made, at her own agent’s request, a new appraisal, that this was sent in and that a new and larger draft came back. Even so, this draft was less than the original claim for $181.14 which, as the majority note, represented another of the three repair estimates. The district court itself observed, p. 579 of 204 F.Supp., that the draft was “made out to the plaintiffs for the amount of $152.98, the cost of the repairs to plaintiffs’ car”. The adjuster in twice transmitting drafts *825said it was “for repairs [damages] to your car”. The defense states in its brief that the insurance carrier “paid the full amount of a claim for property damage in a case of disputed liability”. There is substantial evidence, therefore, to the effect that, although the draft was payable to both, the amount paid was only the damage to the automobile. If this is so and if the car is Edgar’s, where, under Arkansas law and on this record, is it convincingly shown that there was consideration passing to Lena?
It is true, of course, that Lena in her deposition did state that the car “belonged” to “both of us”; that, in response to a question whether the ear was registered in both their names, she said, “I doubt it, I bet it was just in his name”; and that she further said that her husband “can drive, he doesn’t, he never gets to go anywhere, but he drives”; that about the time of the accident “I was doing all of it [the driving]”; that upon the accident “I saw what it had done to my car”; that “I [had] taken my car down there [to the garage]”; that “we had bought the car, when we bought our car there wasn’t a blemish on my car”; that “I know one place I want to take my car to”; that “I was wanting my car fixed”; that “I am not going to worry about that, my back, my car is what’s worrying me and getting it fixed”; and that “I want my car fixed”. But these phrases of ownership strike me as no more than colloquial, familiar and common everyday expressions of a family member toward the affectionately regarded family vehicle. Moreover, they are the remarks of a woman obviously unacquainted and unfamiliar with legal connotations. These comments in the face of the insurance report’s representation certainly do not settle for me the factual issue of ownership. That issue is important because its resolution determines the ensuing conclusion as to the presence or absence of consideration for Lena’s release. It thus qualifies, for me, as an unresolved and genuine issue of material fact, within the meaning of Rule 56(c), F.R.Civ.P.
Of course, if the Arkansas law is to the effect that, even though Lena has no ownership in the automobile and it is owned in its entirety by Edgar, the detriment suffered by the defendant in effecting payment for the property damage constitutes legal consideration for Lena’s release, see Hanson v. Northern States Power Co., 1936, 198 Minn. 24, 268 N.W. 642, 643, and West v. Kidd, 1931, 184 Minn. 494, 239 N.W. 157, the issue then would not be one of material fact. But these two Minnesota cases expound Minnesota law, not that of Arkansas. Minnesota, furthermore, may perhaps be regarded as a state where rights of married women are not so considerately viewed as in Arkansas. See, for example, Eschenbach v. Benjamin, 1935, 195 Minn. 378, 379, 263 N.W. 154, 155, and Plartman v. Cold Spring Granite Co., 1956, 247 Minn. 515, 516, 77 N.W.2d 651, 652. The plaintiffs in the present case have urged absence as well as inadequacy of consideration. The district court, as I read its opinion, passed only upon inadequacy and not at all upon absence of consideration.
I therefore am led to the conclusion that we are confronted with an unresolved and genuine issue of material fact, namely, the presence or absence of legal consideration passing to Lena for her release. In the alternative, we are at least confronted with an issue of Arkansas contract law which the State’s Supreme Court apparently has not passed upon and which the district court here did not determine. Lena’s case deserves remand at least for that purpose.
The majority holding necessarily embraces the conclusions that Lena as a matter of law received consideration for her release or, in the alternative, that it makes no difference whether she did or did not so long as her husband Edgar did. It may be that ultimately one of these will be the only conclusion possible in this case. I merely fail to see how at this point we may properly deprive Lena of the opportunity appropriately to demonstrate, if she can, the absence of con*826sideration flowing to her and the materiality of this absence. This she may not be able to do. Her burden is a heavy one, but I feel she is entitled to her day in court.