Court Opinion

ID: 9710580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:12:20.091101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:57.887535
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
DeBruler, J.
In this case, plaintiffs bargained for and purchased their house from the Shipmans. The Shipmans had purchased it four years earlier from the defendant-builder, Mac Brown & Company. There are no allegations in the com*231plaint that express warranties of any kind were made by defendant-builder, or that the house had been negligently constructed, or that the contract between the defendant-builder and the Shipmans may have contemplated future purchasers from the Shipmans as beneficiaries thereof, or that privity of any variety existed between plaintiffs and defendant-builder, or that the defendant-builder had fraudulently misrepresented the quality of the house. The loss sustained by the plaintiffs was the economic loss which occurred when they bought the house which turned out to have less value than they thought it had. There is no injury to person or property caused by the defects in the house other than this economic loss. Under the circumstances outlined in the complaint, and reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, this case is properly governed by the law of contracts and sales and not the law of torts.
In Theis v. Heuer, (1971) 264 Ind. 1, 280 N.E.2d 300, this Court created and imposed the implied warranty of fitness for habitation upon the bargain and sale between the builder-vendor and his first purchaser-consumer-user. Privity between the parties existed there. It was a contract case, and not a tort case. In J. I. Case Co. v. Sandefur, (1964) 245 Ind. 213, 197 N.E.2d 519, the purchaser of a used tractor who was injured because of a defective power take-off on it, was permitted to sue the original manufacturer in tort without proving privity with that manufacturer. It was a tort case.
Disposing of the requirement of showing privity in a contract case involves consideration not present when doing away with it for the purpose of suing a builder or manufacturer for injury to person or property caused by a negligent manufacturer or dangerously defective product. The determination of damages recoverable from this defendant-builder must rest in part upon the expectation about the house created in the minds of the Barneses at the time of their purchase of the house from the Shipmans. Those ex*232pectations would have arisen out of the bargaining which took place between them. Defendant-builder did not engage in that bargaining and thereby participate in establishing the perimeters of any expectations. And the expectations of bargaining parties end up translated into the purchase price. Defendant-builder had nothing to do with determining the purchase price paid by the Barneses.
The law governing sales between private individuals and in business has its source in the common law and in statute. In the area of commercial law, many choices have been made by Indiana in enacting the Uniform Commercial Code-Sales, Ind. Code § 26-1-2-318, Burns § 19-2-318. No express or implied warranty is created by the UCC which would protect the plaintiffs here, had they purchased a used piano from a private party instead of a used house. And at common law, there would be no warranty from defendant-builder upon which these plaintiffs might rely, because they had no contract with defendant-builder. 25 I.L.E. Sales of Personalty § 102. It seems to me that the majority opinion extends the liability of the home builder beyond that of manufacturers of items of personal property, a result difficult to support.
I must also point out that the judicially created warranty of fitness for habitation is an ill-defined concept, and for this reason should not be extended to cover doubtful situations. What type of defect in a house will subject the builder-vendor to liability? Certainly, a latent defect may occur in a house twenty years or longer after construction. When does the claim for breach of an implied warranty accrue? Is there a time limitation upon the bringing of such claims? These unanswered questions and the absence of any sound or persuasive juridical rationale for the imposition of liability upon the defendant-builder in this case create for me an obstacle to exercising my judicial authority as a common law judge to create such liability. This change in the law should come about if at all through legislative action. That body alone *233would have the authority to set a time limitation upon any such liability, which seems to me to be indispensable to a just rule of law governing the liability of a builder to remote purchasers of the houses he builds and sells.
Prentice, J., concurs.
Note. — Reported at 342 N.E.2d 619.