Court Opinion

ID: 9486572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:53:19.826911+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:48.610726
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I accept without reservation Judge Pos-ner’s lucid and admirable explanation of the various gradations and nuances of the term “meeting of the minds” and the widely misunderstood case of Raffles v. Wichelhaus, 2 H. & C. 906, 159 Eng.Rep. 376 (Ex. 1864). As Professor Farnsworth notes, our understanding of these issues “would be improved if [the] much-abused metaphor [of ‘meeting of the minds’] were abandoned.” 1 E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts § 3.5, at 168 n. 2 (1990).
Nonetheless, this seems to me in some ways a much easier case than either of my colleagues’ opinions would let on. Interpreting the contract is the arbitrator’s responsibility. Only questions of contract formation are for the court. By framing this question as one of a “meeting of the minds,” Colfax tries to turn an ordinary question of interpretation into one of formation, and thereby get out from under the arbitration clause. Judge Posner’s opinion correctly dismisses this attempt.
I am inclined here, however, to affirm the judgment of the district court on its own terms and on the rationale supplied by that court. The summary settlement document to which Patten assented purported to be a summary of the manning changes in the pri- or (1987-1991) agreement made by the parties in the course of the current negotiations. These are all changes on their face addressed to the requirements of specific presses of specific sizes and having specific color capabilities. Thus the following relevant entries appear:
4C 60" Press — 3 men:
1st Pressman, 2nd Pressman and 1 Feeder
5C 78" Press — 4 men:
1st Pressman, 2nd Pressman, 1st Feeder, 2nd Feeder or through attrition 65% Helper
There was no entry for the 4-color 78" press in which Colfax was interested. The *756inescapable inference is that the manning for that press had not been changed.
The parties in arguing the issue have made various points about “ranges”, e.g., presses of 60" or less or presses of 60" and more. “Ranges” have apparently figured in various agreements of the parties in the past and present; but there is nothing in the summary settlement document that suggests “ranges.” This document refers, as I have indicated, to the manning requirements of specific presses having specific characteristics. These were the only presses with respect to which the collective bargaining agreement changed the manning requirements.
If deductions about “ranges” were to be drawn from these specific changes (and I see no reason to do this), they might be valid if drawn in a size-downward direction. Thus, if a 60" press required a 3-man crew, it would seem reasonable to infer that a smaller 40" press would not require more than a 3-man crew. The Union has suggested this as a valid inference. On the other hand Colfax suggests .that the change in the 60" press manning requirement should extend upward to include a larger 78" press. This inference could not gain support from the common sense of larger presses requiring larger crews.
In any event, the district court took a clear position in this matter:
The settlement agreement’s designation of a specific press size stands in marked contrast to the prior agreements that described press sizes in terms of ranges; it does not support the inference that a range of press sizes was referenced by the 60" designation: Because there is no ambiguity in the terms of the settlement agreement, the court is precluded from considering extrinsic evidence to interpret the meaning of the terms used.
Op. at 12, 1993 WL 291894.
The district court thereupon granted summary judgment on the Union’s counterclaim to compel arbitration. It is clear enough that Colfax’s acceptance of the summary settlement agreement unambiguously supports the Union’s position that there is a collective bargaining agreement containing an arbitration clause and that the meaning of the contract terms should therefore be submitted to arbitration.
Whatever difficulty this case has caused comes from the fact that the “doctrine” of “meeting of the minds” can be seen in two different ways. The first way is to see it as an element of contract formation. We typically say that a contract is formed where there is an offer and acceptance. But where the offeror offers one thing, and the offeree accepts another, we sometimes say that no contract has been formed because there is no consensus ad idem — no agreement on the same thing. On this view, without a “meeting of the minds,” there is “simply no agreement to which the parties could be bound.” Marvin A. Chirelstein, Concepts and Case Analysis in the Law of Contracts 35 (1990). Judge McDade’s concurrence seems to me to embrace this view (“There either .was a ‘meeting of the minds’ and a contract formed, or there was not a ‘meeting of the minds’ and therefore no contract between the parties.”).
The doctrine could alternatively be understood simply as a metaphor. This is the position I understand Judge Posner to take. On this understanding, where a court declares that there is no meeting of the minds, it is not really saying that there is no contractual relation between the parties, but simply declaring that it cannot discern a non-arbitrary way to decide whose interpretation is best. It therefore will not enforce either version, but will instead allow remedies of rescission and restitution, and send the parties their separate ways. This is exactly what the court does where it allows a party out of a contractual obligation on the grounds of impossibility or of mutual mistake. As in those situations, it is as if there were no contract at all, though the suggestion that “no contract was formed” is just a metaphor. We should not literally believe, as Professor Chirelstein would have us, that a contract does not and never did exist.
Whether the requirement that you need a meeting of the minds to form a contract is literal or metaphoric usually doesn’t matter. The result is typically the same either way. The parties go off as if no contract were ever formed. But in cases like this one it is *757dispositive. As noted, the court decides only whether a contract exists. Interpreting the contract is the arbitrator’s task. If no meeting of the minds literally means no contract, the arbitrator would not be at liberty — under AT & T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers of America, 475 U.S. 643, 106 S.Ct. 1415, 89 L.Ed.2d 648 (1986) — to find there has been no meeting of the minds. If there were no meeting of the minds, Judge McDade argues, there would be no contract for it to arbitrate. The arbitrator — whose job is only to interpret — -would have interpreted himself out of a job. Judge Posner avoids that catch-22 by seeing the doctrine as metaphor. I am ultimately persuaded that this view is more suitable, and therefore agree with Judge Posner that the arbitrator could still find there to be no meeting of the minds, and therefore allow rescission and restitution.1
I also note, though it is surely dictum at this point, that the Union has clearly conceded in its briefs that the court has only determined that there is a collective bargaining agreement binding Colfax to arbitration and that arbitration should proceed. I should think the Union would now have difficulty asserting that an arbitral award was precluded by a prior judicial determination.

. That an arbitrator would ever actually do such a thing seems to me highly unlikely. Perhaps the most important consequence of there being a collective bargaining agreement in a particular workplace is that conflicts there will be settled through arbitration. This is highly desirable in the eyes of most courts and I should think even more so in the view of most arbitrators. I see little risk of a widespread scuttling of labor contracts by the arbitral fraternity.