Court Opinion

ID: 9741951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:04:40.611669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:27.471762
License: Public Domain

McCown, J.,
dissenting.
I have no quarrel with the general principles of law set out in the majority opinion with respect to the parol evidence rule. The application of those rules to the facts pleaded, however, requires an interpretation and construction of the pleadings as well as the facts. In making that interpretation here the majority opinion has failed to apply another basic rule of law. A party who stands on a general demurrer to a petition thereby admits all material facts well pleaded and must take all the consequences which result from such admission. A petition challenged by demurrer charges what by reasonable and fair intendment may be implied from the facts stated. May Plumbing Co. v. Shaver, 182 Neb. *776251, 153 N. W. 2d 911. The ruling of the District Court in sustaining a demurrer must be determined in the light of those requirements. See Hester v. Young, 154 Neb. 227, 47 N. W. 2d 515. While the pleadings might have been more artfully drawn here, they are nevertheless entitled to the benefit of those rules.
Paragraph 2 of plaintiffs’ petition pleaded in toto: “That the Defendant purchased an easement across Plaintiffs’ said lands in September, 1968; as part of the negotiations therefor Defendant’s easement purchaser promised to Plaintiffs that if they would sign Defendant’s proposed easement and Defendant thereafter had to pay more than said amount to other land owners, that Defendant would then pay Plaintiffs additional funds for said easement to equalize such payments.”
A reasonable inference can be drawn that the portion of the agreement dealing with the easement was integrated but the entire agreement was not. Restatement, Contracts 2d, T.D. No. 5, section 236, page 127, deals with complete and partially integrated agreements. Comment a states in part: “Even though there is an integrated agreement, consistent additional terms not reduced to writing may be shown, unless the court finds that the writing was assented to by both parties as a complete and exclusive statement of all the terms.”
Restatement, Contracts 2d, T.D. No. 6, section 239, page 28, dealing with the effect of an integrated agreement on prior agreements under the parol evidence rule states at comment a: “Where an agreement is partly oral and partly written, the writing is at most a partially integrated agreement. See § 235.”
Section 24, Restatement, Contracts 2d, T.D. No. 6, section 242, page 45, provides: “Consistent Additional Terms. (1) Evidence of a consistent additional term is admissible to explain or supplement an integrated agreement unless the court finds that the agreement was completely integrated.
“(2) An agreement is not completely integrated if it *777omits a consistent additional agreed term which is (a) agreed to for separate consideration, or (b) such a term as in the circumstances might naturally be omitted from the writing.”
The alleged oral agreement in no way challenges the easement nor the fact that it was executed and integrated. The pleading concedes that the easement was final and binding on the plaintiffs but it does not concede that the easement represented an integration of the complete agreement but instead alleges a separated or unintegrated oral agreement for a different or separate consideration with consistent additional terms. The alleged oral agreement does not vary or contradict any of the terms of the easement nor dispute its validity in any way.
By reasonable intendment plaintiffs have alleged that in consideration for plaintiffs executing the easement the defendant agreed that if it thereafter paid other landowners a higher unit price per pole for similar easements it would then pay to plaintiffs the difference between the unit amount paid to plaintiffs and the higher unit amount paid to any such other landowners.
Such an oral agreement, if established by the evidence, and if sufficiently specific, would not be barred by the parol evidence rule but the issues involved cannot be determined on the basis of the pleadings without evidence. To dispose of this case on the pleadings, as the court does, fails to give the plaintiffs the benefit of the rule that a demurrer to a petition admits all material facts well pleaded and any reasonable and fair intendments which may be implied from the facts stated.
Boslaugh and Brodkey, JJ.; join in this dissent.