Court Opinion

ID: 9471083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:24:54.482153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:16.015408
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
While I fully concur in the court’s opinion as it relates to attorneys’ fees, I respectfully cannot concur in its application of the law to the facts of this case.
The plaintiff made a brokerage agreement by which he worked toward a sale while leaving the owner free to compete with his efforts. The compensation was fixed at three percent of the sales price if the owner’s competing efforts defeated plaintiff’s chance to make the sale. The only question in this litigation is whether the sale ultimately effected comes within the contemplation of the parties to the brokerage agreement. The sticky nuance in this case is that proffered parol evidence excluded by the trial court suggests that a writing fixing the terms of the sale which would satisfy the statute of frauds was not physically signed until after the termination date of the brokerage contract. The excluded testimony does however confirm that the parties to the sale elected to make the effective date of the agreement coincide with the approximate time when they made the oral deal, which fell well within the period of the brokerage contract. Moreover, Mr. Dodds admitted that sometime in October he told the plaintiff to abandon his sales efforts because the property had been sold. The plaintiff also testified:
Mr. Dodds had rejected our contract that we had because he had a substantially better offer. He came by to tell us that the sale was made, the closing documents were being prepared and he wanted to negotiate the actual amount of commission that J. R. Fulton was to receive because of other provisions in the contract which would change the consideration, the total consideration.
Record, vol. 6, at 22-23.
Nothing in the testimony or proffered testimony suggests that the parties to the sale intended the sale and its closing to be effective on any date other than the one recited in the sales documents. It is clear from the record, both admitted and proffered, that the signed sales agreement ratified and was intended to ratify the sale which occurred within the brokerage contract period. The agreement even related the closing back to September 1st. Record, vol. 2, PI. Ex. 3, § 6.02. It is clear to me that this sale satisfied the terms of the brokerage agreement which provided that “[t]he term of this agreement shall be from June 10, 1976, to December 10, 1976, unless sold, in which case this agreement may be terminated at the time of closing.” Record, vol. 2, PI. Ex. 2, para. 4.
It is clear that under the general law of Oklahoma the brokerage agreement could not have been enforced unless a written sales agreement satisfying the statute of frauds had been signed. According to the excluded testimony, the sales agreement was not signed until after the expiration of the brokerage contract. However, when the parties relate the written agreement back to the date when they first reached an agreement to enter the sale, and that date is within the term of the brokerage agreement, the seller is bound by that choice not only under the terms of the sale but also under the terms of the dependent brokerage agreement.
Much is made in the briefs of the suggestion that the parol evidence which was excluded would show that some details of the sale were not settled until after the critical December 10th date. It does not appear that the trial court actually weighed the proffered parol to determine whether that assertion is true. Rather it is apparent that the trial court believed that even if the offer of proof were true, it would not alter the result. The trial court’s alternative holding was that when a sale is orally made within the term of a brokerage agreement and under the written and enforceable terms of the sales agreement its effective date is within the term of the brokerage agreement, the parties to the sale are bound by that date even as it affects the question of the dependent brokerage agreement. *1425The trial court was quite correct in concluding in effect that the parties to the sale cannot have it both ways: a sales agreement effective and enforceable by its terms on a date within the term of the brokerage agreement but ineffective and unenforceable on that same date for purposes of'the brokerage agreement. If the retroactive date applies for all other purposes to the terms and conditions of the sale, it also applies to the terms and conditions so far as they affect the dependent and related brokerage agreement. The later signed writing merely legitimates under the statute of frauds the sale agreed upon earlier. Since the only issue addressed by the proffered parol is the date of the physical signing of the sales contract, rather than its intended effective date, the trial court was correct in concluding that even if the parol had been admitted the plaintiff was entitled to a commission under the brokerage agreement.
Except for the attorneys’ fees issue, I would affirm.