Court Opinion

ID: 9791404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:10:18.431163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.974760
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(concurring in the result).
I concur in the result, but on the ground that Strands have misconceived their remedy. They sued on the basis of unjust enrichment. They base their action on their own default, the Maynes being ready to carry out their bargain. This writer knows of no equitable principle that, under such circumstances, would permit one to seek equity without doing it. Had Strands sought specific performance, tendering into court the amount of their delinquent payments, the cases cited in the main opinion might be apropos. This is not a case where. a seller is seeking to forfeit out a necessitous buyer under a uniform real estate contract, but one where a buyer, showing nothing in the way of excuse for not carrying out his part of a contract, seeks to recover something from a seller willing to perform, on the inequitable basis óf a conceded breach by the buyer without proffer of performance on his part and no showing of any reason why he shouldn’t or couldn’t carry out his written bond. It would be a mockery to give relief at law to such a defecting promisor, and a greater mockery in equity, to relieve the buyer of his sacred but broken promise, and then actually require a nondefaulting seller to return any part of the consideration for which he bargained and for which he was ready and willing to perform upon condition of performance by the other party to the contract. Such a conclusion would be such judicial paternalism, — wrong and unfair on its face and so inimical to centuries’ old legal and equitable principles as would call for Hitlerian burning, riot only of the books on the subject, but the pages in decisions and precedent applicable to such circumstances.
In this case it is unnecessary even to canvass the relative balance sheets of the parties, but the equities, which obviously are lopsided and unilateral in favor of him who is willing to perform as agreed and against him who not only has defaulted, but concedes' that he never intends to carry out the promise inked by his signature.
CALLISTER, J., concurs in the concurring opinion of HENRIOD, C. J.