Court Opinion

ID: 9570192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:20:52.538362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:22.703813
License: Public Domain

Gregory, Justice
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent.
The majority opinion’s reliance on Bugg v. Bugg, 272 S. C. 122, 249 S. E. (2d) 505 (1978) and Holliday v. Pegram, 89 S. C. 73, 71 S. E. 367 (1911), is misplaced.1 The parties involved in those cases were the parties to the contract in dispute. Here, respondent is not a party to the alleged agreement between appellant and Harbor Island Development Corporation (the Corporation).
Contrary to the majority’s assertion that appellant did not allege in its petition that it had contractual rights with which respondent interfered, appellant did allege in Paragraph 3 of its petition that appellant and the Corporation “reached certain understandings” whereby appellant or its subsidiary would undertake to develop, market, and sell multi-family units upon real property owned by the Corporation. Were it not for respondent’s interference, the Corporation may have *374fulfilled its verbal agreement with appellant. Whether the Corporation intended to fulfill its verbal agreement with appellant and whether it would have done so but for respondent’s interference was a factual issue for the jury, not the trial judge, to decide. See Duckett v. Pool, 33 S. C. 238, 11 S. E. 689 (1890). Summary judgment, therefore, was not proper. See cases collected in 12 West’s South Carolina Digest, Judgment, Key No. 181(2).
The majority opinion further cites Smith v. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 270 S. C. 446, 242 S. E. (2d) 548 (1978), where we held that a cause of action for tortious interference with a prospective contractual relationship does not exist in South Carolina. While I am still of the opinion that tortious interference with the right to contract constitutes an actionable infringement of a property right, Smith, supra, (Lewis, C. J., dissenting), I do not believe that issue is dispositive of this case. Again, it was for the jury to determine whether the Corporation would have fulfilled its agreement with appellant and, if so, whether respondent interfered with appellant’s contractual relationship with the Corporation.
The trial judge held there was no agreement with which respondents could have interfered because the alleged agreement did not comply with the Statute of Frauds, S. C. Code Ann. § 32-3-10 (1976). This was error. The Statute of Frauds as a defense must be pleaded. American Wholesale Corporation v. Mauldin, 128 S. C. 241, 122 S. E. 576 (1924). Respondents did not plead the Statute as a defense and could not have done so. The protection afforded by the Statute is a personal privilege of the parties to the agreement and may be waived. Walker v. Preacher, 188 S. C. 431, 199 S. E. 675 (1937). The Corporation, which is not a party to this action, would be the party protected by the Statute, not respondents.
A stranger to an oral contract cannot avail himself of the fact that the Statute of Frauds renders the contract unenforceable. Hatcher v. Harleysville Mutual Insurance Co., 266 S. C. 548, 225 S. E. (2d) 181 (1976). Respondents, being strangers to the alleged agreement between appellant and the Corporation, cannot avail themselves of the Statute of Frauds defense.
I would reverse and remand for trial.
Lewis, C. J., concurs.

 The principle espoused in Bugg and Holliday was not presented to the trial judge nor passed on in his order under appeal.