Court Opinion

ID: 9624691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:13:49.293402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:03.192178
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, respectfully suggesting that the main opinion 1) violates the principle that on appeal we look at the facts in a light most favorable to the winner below, 2) winks at the principle that he who seeks equity must do equity, and 3) flies in the teeth of our own previous pronouncements.
In contrast to the facts recited in the main opinion, here are those most favorable to defendant: After the parties were divorced, plaintiff paid the amount ordered only until defendant remarried, when he refused to continue the payments, saying he would not pay but would create a trust fund for the child, — which he never did. Defendant did not refuse to accept payments, although language in one of her letters was interpretable either as a consent that plaintiff need not pay while serving on a mission, or as a mere suspension of payments until he returned, in which letter, nonetheless, the defendant reminded plaintiff that he owed over $1,000 support money. Defendant did not demand any money, considering it useless in the light of plaintiff’s declarations. She did not sue him for the delinquencies because she was residing out*229side the state. Although plaintiff paid defendant nothing after her remarriage, he concealed the fact that thereafter and until he went on his mission, he received $25 per month as a veteran for the support of the child after he represented to the government that he was obligated to pay such support. He deliberately converted this money. After returning from his mission in Europe where presumably he was indoctrinating the continental heathens with the virtues of truth and honesty, he again obtained money from the government on his representation that he had to support the child, — this time at the rate of $30 per month for 30 months, —all of which again he concealed from the defendant, and all of which money he again converted, thus defrauding not only the government, but his wife and child. After his role of emissary of the Lord, plaintiff enjoyed a tour of the continent, — and for aught we know paid for the sightseeing trip with the money he got from the government to support his child, — conveniently pocketed by him. Defendant said she never would have indicated any disposition to relieve him of any payments during his visitation in Europe had she known of the concealed government money or the extended continental tour abroad after his period of service, religious or otherwise. It appears that plaintiff’s propensity for embracing a double moral standard extended to the spoken word: He stated that he divorced defendant because he could rely on nothing she said, but as to what she said about relieving him of his parental obligation, why, of course, he relied on everything she said.
What resemblance do these facts bear to those set out in the main opinion? Who is seeking equity in this case, save an admitted converter of public funds? To whom is the main opinion extending the lofty prerogatives of the chancellory, save to a concealer of facts, whose intent not only was to avoid an obligation, but to feather his own nest? To whom is the court making available the principle of es-toppel, — a principle which aborns only where injustice would result to him whose hands are spotless and who honestly has relied on the representations of another to his detriment, save to one who, when it is to his advantage, claims reliance on the words of another upon whose words he claims he could not rely.
No principle is firmer in our jurisprudence than the one requiring that he who seeks equity must do it. No facts could reflect the applicability of that principle better than those here. This court weighs the facts in an equity case, and we should sustain the lower court since the facts sustain that court’s conclusion. It is no answer to say that the lower court may have given the wrong reason for that conclusion since many times we have said that a right con-*230elusion is not vitiated by assigning a wrong reason thereto.
I am also of the opinion that the majority fails to follow our own previous pronouncements. Assuming that defendant made the representations claimed by plaintiff, — which she denies, — any representation suggesting that she would not hold the plaintiff to the obligation ordered by the court was a representation as to future payments. In Price v. Price we said that even a written, signed agreement by a mother that she would not hold the father to the obligation ordered by the court was void. If we refuse to sanction a representation made in a formal agreement in writing, how in the world can we consistently sanction the same kind of representation made orally or in a letter, so as to bind one on a theory of estoppel ?
I believe the trial court should be affirmed because 1) the facts viewed most favorably for defendant clearly show that plaintiff did not rely on any representations to his detriment that would justify even a casual discussion of the doctrine of es-toppel, 2) the plaintiff, in seeking equity, did so with unclean hands, and 3) the facts of this case are stronger than those in the Price case, where we rejected the idea that support money for a child may be the subject of barter in the marketplace.