Court Opinion

ID: 9617405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:54:53.648508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:08.686813
License: Public Domain

FRANCHINI, Justice (dissenting). I respectfully dissent. The trial court appears to have confused the proof of liability requirement. That court dismissed the Yelins’ third-party claim on the premise that all of Carvel’s potential third-party liability to the Yelins was not premised on the first-party liability established by proof of the breach of lease. Our rules do not require that. Joinder simply requires that the first-party defendant allege that a third-party is liable to him for “part of the plaintiff’s claim”. SCRA 1986, 1-014(A). Any additional third-party claims are entertained by reason of judicial economy and are collateral to the claim that satisfied the joinder requirement. The business’s failure undisputedly was the direct cause of the breach of the lease, thus the claim is both transactionally related to and derivative of the major first-party claim. In my opinion it is not, as the majority suggests, “entirely separate from the Yelins’ breach of the lease agreement.” The jury can determine to what degree or percentage, if any, Carvel caused the business’s failure and the resulting inability to pay the rents due under the lease. Obviously, if the Doolittles fail to prove that the Yelins were hable for damages for breach of the lease, the Yelins’ third-party allegations of damages based on liability under the lease would also fail. The Yelins satisfied the requirement of stating facts sufficient to show that Carvel had “potential liability to the defendant which is ... dependent upon the resolution of the main claim.” Yates Exploration, 108 N.M. at 409, 773 P.2d at 354. Unlike the defendant in Yates Exploration, the Yelins have established a substantive basis for relief that is transactionally connected to the first-party claim. The cases cited by the opinion are all factually distinguishable. I respectfully submit that this case is not “closer to” Southeast Mortgage. There, the defendant did not allege that the third-party defendant’s negligence caused her to breach her contract— she simply alleged that HUD failed to provide limitations to keep the first-party plaintiff from suing her for breach of contract in the first place. See 514 F.2d at 748-49. Thus, she did not properly allege facts showing that HUD was liable for part of the mortgagee’s claim against her. In Artex the suit was for return of a mistaken payment, not for breach of a eon-tract. The defendant could not allege any acts by a third party that had anything to do with the mistake, thus its claim against the third-party defendant was not transactionally related. Likewise, the defendants in AAA Excavating, Olavarrieta, Jobe, and Robertson could not show that the alleged wrongful acts were transactionally related. In this case, Carvel was originally primarily liable for the lease and the Doolittles’ claim against the Yelins was based on the assignment of the lease to them. The Yelins asserted that the lease assignment was obtained by Carvel’s fraudulent and negligent misrepresentations and that the original lease was obtained for the sole purpose of inducing individuals to enter into franchise agreements with Carvel. The Yelins further alleged that the Doolittles knew that performance of the lease depended upon fulfillment of Carvel’s obligations under the franchise. In its answer brief Carvel claims that the Yelins did not allege that Carvel is primarily liable. However, it seems to me that the Yelins’ claims that the assignment was void ab initio because of fraud does give rise to the possibility that Carvel could be found primarily liable under the original lease. I believe the trial court improperly dismissed the Yelins’ claims against Carvel. I would reverse the trial court.