Court Opinion

ID: 9541716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:02.696804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:33.279800
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE WARD, dissenting: I cannot accept the majority’s conclusion that the statement “he was a lousy agent” can be innocently construed to mean that there was a “generally unsatisfactory agency relationship” between the plaintiff and his employer. The majority not unreasonably first says that the intent and meaning of the statement must be determined from the context of Kaufman’s statement, but it proceeds to ignore the context in which the plaintiff was said to have been a lousy (“miserably poor or inferior” — Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1339 (1961)) agent. I say the majority ignores the context, because its opinion shows that Kaufman, after stating that the plaintiff was a lousy agent, went on to say that the plaintiff was being discharged by the defendant company. The opinion continues, saying that during the conversation with Simons, Kaufman had said that the plaintiff had spent too much money for furniture, had not devoted his time to North American’s business but had spent his time in other endeavors and had not done the things for his employer he was supposed to have done. From the setting of Kaufman’s statement it is clear that he was referring to the plaintiff in his capacity or business as an insurance agent. I also find it clear that Kaufman was describing the plaintiff as being lousy in that capacity. Equating the open and straightforward expression “lousy agent” with the majority’s ambiguous “generally unsatisfactory agency relationship” is, it seems to me, a severe distortion of language. I consider the “innocent construction rule” from John v. Tribune Co., 24 Ill.2d 437, 442 (which I read,as an obiter dictum) has no place here. This court said in John that words are to be “given their natural and obvious meaning.” I think few will say the majority has given “lousy” its natural and obvious meaning. UNDERWOOD, C.J., and SCHAEFER, J., join in this dissent.