Court Opinion

ID: 9652330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:22:22.291694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:50.347349
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the result reached by the majority, but I find the issues presented different from those discussed by the majority.
Appellee (seller) did not deliver to appellant (buyer) the amount of grain specified in the written contracts; he did *242not because wet weather and other circumstances prevented him from growing enough grain to deliver the specified amount. However, pointing to oral negotiations, appellee reads the contracts as calling only for delivery of whatever amount of grain he grew. Appellant reads the contracts as requiring delivery of the specified amount of grain, from whatever source.
Appellant argues that parol evidence of the oral negotiations should not have been admitted. As I read appellant’s brief, its argument is this: It was error for the trial judge not to have decided, himself, whether the contracts were intended to be the “complete and exclusive statement of the terms of the agreement,” Uniform Commercial Code, Act of Oct. 2, 1959, P.L. 1023, § 2, 12A P.S. § 2-202(b). If the judge had decided that the contracts were a complete and exclusive statement, no parol evidence of “consistent additional terms” would have been admissible. Instead of making this decision, the judge left it to the jury.
I agree with the majority that even so, parol evidence of course of dealing or usage of trade could have been admitted under Uniform Commercial Code § 2-202(a). However, appellee introduced no such evidence. Indeed, appellee has never invoked § 2-202(a). I therefore cannot join the majority’s statement that “[ajppellee justifies his right to explain the meaning of the contracts in the light of the conversations which preceded them by reliance upon Section 2-202(a) . . . .” Majority Opinion at 237. Since appellee has never invoked § 2-202(a), a decision by the trial judge that the written contracts were a complete and exclusive statement would have sufficed to bar any parol evidence of the oral negotiations.
Appellant is correct that this decision was for the judge, not the jury: under § 2-202(b) written terms may be supplemented “unless the court finds the writing to have been intended also as a complete and exclusive statement of the terms of the agreement” (emphasis supplied). However, appellant has waived this argument, for he never made it below, instead allowing the jury to decide the question. I *243agree with the lower court that there was ample evidence in support of the jury’s verdict.
JACOBS and HOFFMAN, JJ., join in this opinion.