Court Opinion

ID: 9743539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:36:06.07152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:41.883069
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion
White, J.
I concur in the majority’s statement of reasons for affirming as to Issues One and Two, but cannot give my unqualified endorsement to all that is said as to Issue Three, though I have no quarrel with the result.
In Indiana “prior to the 18th day of June, 1852” (the effective date of the Constitution of Indiana, hereafter merely “1852”) the vendee of real estate or other unique property (such as shares in a corporation) whose vendor refused to convey could apply to a court of equity for a decree of specific performance or to a court of law for a money judgment for damages for breach of contract. If he tried first in equity for specific performance but failed for some reason other than that his contract with his vendor was invalid, he could then apply to a court of law for damages for the breach of that contract. Modisett v. Johnson (1831), 2 Blkf. 431, 440.
In that 1831 case the Indiana Supreme Court reversed a decree of specific performance saying:
“ . . . [A] Court of equity must be satisfied that the claim is fair, just and reasonable, the contract equal in all its parts, and founded on an adequate consideration, before it will decree performance. If there be any objection on these points that is well grounded, the party will be left to his remedy at law. [My emphasis.] Seymour v. Delancey et al., 6 Johns. C. Rep. 222....”
.In Ikerd v. Beavers (1886), 106 Ind. 483, 486, 7 N. E. 326, 327, denial of specific performance was approved. Modisett v. Johnson, supra, was cited followed by the comment: “Parties in such cases should be remitted to their rights at law.” *528Further on, the court said: “That an adequate remedy is available to them, affords an additional reason why a court of equity will refuse to enforce the contract.”
In Sternberger v. McGovern (1874), 56 N. Y. 12, 20, the Court of Appeals of New York, after approving a denial of specific performance stated:
“The remaining question is, whether the General Term ought not to have ordered a new trial instead of giving final judgment dismissing the complaint. It appears from the opinions that the latter course was adopted, for the reason that it appeared, upon the trial, that the plaintiffs were aware, at the time of the commencement of the action, that the defendant could not perform the contract, and that in such a case equity would not retain the suit for the purpose of awarding damages which could be recovered in an action at law. This was the rule prior to the adoption of the Code. Morss v. Elmendorf, 11 Paige, 277. But the Code authorizes the uniting of causes of action, both legal and equitable, arising out of the same transaction in the complaint. Bradley v. Aldrich, 40 N. Y.* 504, 512; 100 Am. Dec. 528. The facts constituting these causes of action must be stated in the complaint. The court held in that case that no facts constituting a legal cause of action were stated in the complaint, and that as the plaintiff failed to prove the equitable cause of action stated, the complaint was properly dismissed. This shows that when the complaint states facts giving an equitable cause of action and also a legal cause of action, arising out of the same transaction, the party is entitled to have both tried, if necessary to obtain his rights. That is this case. The complaint sets out the contract and alleges a tender of performance by the plaintiff and a breach by the defendant, and demands judgment for $125,000 and other relief. True, he demands equitable relief, based upon the ground that he was entitled to a specific performance of that part of the contract relating to the Thompson street property. He failed in showing a right to this. He then had a right to a trial of his claim for damages sustained by the breach. True, the mode of trial may be different. The former must be tried by a court or a referee, unless some question or questions of fact involved are ordered by the court .to be tried by jury. Either party has the right to a jury trial of the latter. This creates no practical difficulty. The one issue may be tried by the court and the *529other by jury if the ends of justice require the trial of both, or both may be tried by the court or a referee if the parties so desire.”
The holding in Beck v. Allison (1874), 56 N. Y. 366, 372, was the same with the court noting that:
“It was only where the plaintiff was entitled to equitable relief upon the case made by him, but which could not be awarded, for the reason that it was not in the power of the defendant to perform the judgment granting it, or that such relief would be harsh and inequitable under all the circumstances of the case, that the court, as a substitute therefor, awarded an equivalent in damages, thus ending the controversy, instead of sending the parties to a court of law for that purpose.”
The simple point is that specific performance of a contract and damages for its breach were not, prior to 1852, obtainable in the same action. Specific performance was obtainable only in a “cause that . . . [was] of exclusive equitable jurisdiction . . . [and was] tried by the court . . .” while damages were obtainable only in “actions at law” in which “issues of fact” (if any) were triable by jury.1 Thus when, under code pleading or under notice pleading, we have a demand both for specific performance of a contract and a demand for damages for breach of that same contract, we may well (though not necessarily) have a “case of the joinder of causes of action . . . which, prior to said date, were of exclusive equitable jurisdiction with causes of action on defenses which prior to said date were designated as actions at law and triable by jury. . . .” If there be that joinder, then by the provisions of Trial Rule 38(A) (from which I have just quoted and now again quote), “the former shall be triable by the court and the latter by jury, unless waived; the trial of both may be at the same time or at different times, as the court may direct.”
*530That a suit for specific performance was an equitable proceeding in which damages ordinarily could not be recovered was clearly recognized by our predecessor, the Appellate Court of Indiana, in Fox v. Wallace (1926), 88 Ind. App. 235, 151 N. E. 835. In that case the vendor’s wife had not joined in. the contract he made to convey their entireties’ real estate. For that- reason the trial judge denied a decree for specific performance but rendered judgment for damages. That judgment was reversed on the premise “that the judgment rendered by the court should be in conformity with the issues presented by the pleadings and the evidence” and that the judgment appealed lacked that conformity because “[T]he theory of the complaint is not for breach of contract . . . [but] for specific performance; and, on that theory, the cause was tried.”2
The case of Pirchio v. Noecker (1948), 226 Ind. 622, 82 N. E. 2d 838, 7 A. L. R. 2d 1198, in which the trial court decreed specific performance to defendant vendees on their counterclaim and awarded them a judgment of $1,000.00 for damages (the latter being reversed), probably has little relevance to the questions before us in the case at bar, but the annotation which follows it in 7 A. L. R. 2d at 1204 is highly relevant. The annotator distils these principles from the cases he cites and discusses:
“§ 1. Introduction: general principles.
This annotation concerns the equitable right of the vendee, in a suit for specific performance of a contract for the sale or exchange of realty, to compensation for the delay in receiving title.
*531“The proposition relevant to this annotation is often stated loosely as being that a court, in granting specific performance, will also award damages for the defendant’s breach of contract. This is not an accurate statement of the principle on which the court acts. It is not accurate for two reasons, (1) because the court will often award the same compensation when blame for the delay cannot be attributed to either party, and even when the decree is granted at the behest of one who is technically but not reprehensibly at fault; (2) because what the court awards cannot properly be called damages for breach of contract. This later fact is to be borne in mind in any circumspect approach to the subject. The conflicting view which seems to have been taken in Indiana by the decision in Pirchio v. Noecker (1948), 226 Ind. 622, 82 N. E. 2d 838, 7 ALR2d 1198, is not in accord with the prevailing doctrine.
“The compensation awarded as incident to a decree for specific performance is not for breach of contract and is therefore not legal damages. The complainant affirms the contract as being still in force and asks that it be performed. He cannot have it both ways, performed and broken. The situation is simply that, if the court orders it to be performed, the decree must as nearly as possible order it to be performed according to its terms, and one of those terms is the date fixed by it for its completion. This date having passed, the court, in order to relate the performance back to it, equalizes any losses occasioned by the delay by offsetting them with money payments. Often the result is more like an accounting between the parties than like an assessment of damages.
“ ‘The vendee is not due specific performance and also damages for its breach.’ Pearce v. Third Ave. Improv. Co. (1930), 221 Ala 209, 128 So 396.
“ ‘But equity will not adjust matters upon the basis that the contract is broken, and that plaintiff is entitled to damages for the breach. He cannot have both damages for the breach of contract and a specific performance of it. It is not the breach of the contract, but the contract itself that gives the right to an action for specific performance.’ Smith v. Gibson (1870), 15 Minn 89, Gil 66.
“§ 2. Purchaser’s claim to legal damages as for breach of contract.
It follows from the theory of the remedy by decree of specific performance that damages as at law for breach of contract by the vendor, in not conveying the property at *532the time fixed by the contract, are not recoverable by the purchaser as supplementary to the decree. The contract is being performed, not broken.
“The view that legal damages for breach of contract are not recoverable as ancillary to a decree for specific performance, because inconsistent with the retrospective erasure of the breach, is implied in the uniform practice in such cases, and is held in the following decisions:
“It was expressly held in Schiavone v. Ashton (1933), 269 Ill App 386, that ordinary decline in value during the delay in making conveyance, either through a difference in market value or through ordinary wear and tear, is not a subject for the allowance of damages to a purchaser in an equity suit by him for specific performance.
“ ‘In adjudging specific performance, provisions should be made to compensate the plaintiff for the loss he has sustained by the delays. In estimating this, it will not be proper to consider the depreciation in the value of the lands; but only the value of their use during the period that they have been kept from him.’ Benson v. Tilton (1863, NY), 24 How Pr 494, aff’d without op 41 NY 619.
“And where a trial court, upon awarding specific performance, ordered the usual accounting between the parties, but declared that the plaintiff was entitled also to damages for the breach, the decree was held erroneous in the latter respect, because when the accounts were equalized there would be no ground for such damages. Ragette v. Zimmer (1904), 98 App Div 619, 90 NYS 221. The nature of the damages claimed is not shown.”
In Doctor v. Reiss (1917), 180 App. Div. 62, 167 N. Y. Supp. 193, the buyer sued for specific performance of a contract to sell all the shares of stock of a construction corporation which contract also included an agreement “that a third party would advance $25,000.00 as a building loan”. No demand was made for a money judgment. The court said:
“It appearing that the third party had refused, and continued to refuse, to make the loan of $25,000, obviously there could be no decree for specific performance. This was known to the plaintiff before the action was begun. Plaintiff claims that, notwithstanding, if he could establish that the refusal of the third party to make the loan was due to the acts of the defendants, plaintiff was entitled to a money judgment.
*533“Defendants had the right to a jury trial, if the action was for damages for breach of contract. . . . [T]he court should not have dismissed the complaint, for it contained all the facts necessary to establish a cause of action at law. The mere absence of the demand for damages, where the complaint states facts from which damages would naturally flow, and also alleges the fact of damage, does not render the statement of a cause of action insufficient. In such a case as this, where the complaint contains all the facts necessary in an action at law, the proper practice is not to dismiss the complaint, but to send the case to the jury calendar for trial. Sternberger v. McGovern, 56 N.Y. 12; Levy v. Knepper, 117 App. Div. 163, 102 N.Y. Supp. 313.”
Plaintiffs-appellants assert that their “complaint is an action at law for breach of contract; the first four rhetorical paragraphs thereof narrate a continuing set of circumstances building up to plaintiffs’ damage in the sum of $500,000, which loss to plaintiffs is specifically alleged as rhetorical paragraph 4 of said complaint . . . .”3 Plaintiffs fail, however, to set out their complaint, or paragraph 4, or the substance of either, in their brief. Nor are we told whether there is any evidence, or offer of proof, in the record disclosing any issues of fact appropriate for trial by jury.
Appellees’ brief quite aptly points out that “[T]here is no showing by appellants that the ‘damages’ which they requested in their prayer for relief in addition to specific performance is anything other than what they contend is due to them in respect to the accounting which they also seek.”4 (Appellee’s emphasis.)
Since the majority opinion quite obligingly quotes the complaint verbatim in its footnote one, I repeat here rhetorical paragraph 4 thereof, as follows:
“4. Defendant, Yergins, to the injury of plaintiffs further continuously since November 30, 1968, assume 50% *534ownership of defendant Henry County Beverage Company, Incorporated, equal representation upon its Board of Directors with the other 50% shareholders, ownership and entitlement to 50% of its corporate assets, earnings, surplus profits and dividends of not less than $50,000.00 annually, and certain salaries therefrom, all of which are the property of and jointly due plaintiffs to plaintiffs damage in the sum of $500,000.00 in addition to the 500 shares of said capital stock of defendant, Henry County Beverage Company, Incorporated, wrongfully withheld by defendants, Yergins, from plaintiffs.”
Those allegations suggest to me that the so-called “damages” which are there asserted (and later demanded in the prayer) are merely losses incident to the delay in reconveying the stock. The implication is that Yergins have profited (“to the injury of plaintiffs”) by using plaintiffs’ stock. This conclusion is fortified by the allegation of rhetorical paragraph 7 that “ [P] laintiffs are without an adequate remedy at law”. Quoting once again (see ante, p. 530) from the annotation in 7 A. L. R. 2d at p. 1208:
“ ‘In adjudging specific performance, provision should be made to compensate the plaintiff for the loss he has sustained by the delays. In estimating this, it will not be proper to consider the depreciation in the value of the lands; but only the value of their use during the period that they have been kept from him.’ Benson v. Tilton (1863, NY), 24 How Pr 494, aff’d without op 41 NY 619.”
In thus looking to the complaint I am not suggesting that a final determination of the right of either party to a jury trial of all or part of the issues can be made by examining the allegations of the pleadings. Neither can it be made from an examination of the “ ‘deposition and discovery procedure’ ”,5 an examination of the totality of the action,6 or by any other pre-trial procedure or process. The suggestion that *535the pre-trial conference can be useful is well taken, but may not always prove infallible.
It is my notion that, although a general jury demand preserves the right as to all issues triable by jury, good practice dictates that in those cases where there are obviously many issues not triable by jury as of right, the party requesting the jury should make some attempt to assist the court in recognizing what part of the action is triable by jury as of right. But I see no real necessity for the court to know, before he tries the equity case without a jury, whether there is also combined with it a law case triable as of right by a jury. No legal reason comes to mind which would require the judge to decide, before he commences a court tidal, whether a jury trial should also be held. All he then needs to decide is that a court trial of at least some issues of fact in the case is constitutionally permissible.7
So far as the record in this case discloses, that may well be exactly what the trial court decided, and all he decided, when he sustained defendants’ objections to trial by jury and proceeded to hear the case without a jury. At any rate, he did decide that plaintiffs should have a trial on their claim that they were entitled to specific performance of the contract. Plaintiffs were given a trial of that claim by the only trier of fact to which any seeker of an equitable remedy has ever been entitled as of right. At the conclusion of that trial all the court expressly decided was that plaintiffs were not entitled to specific performance. Plaintiffs have no basis to complain that a jury was not called to decide the facts incident to that trial.8
*536After that trial and the decision that plaintiffs were not entitled to equitable relief, the only question remaining undecided was whether there should be a further trial to determine whether plaintiffs should recover damages for breach of the contract which they could not force defendants to perform. At that trial (if one were to be held) plaintiffs would be entitled to a jury because damages were not awarded (prior to 1852) by courts of equity for breaches of contracts they found not to be specifically enforceable. Modisett v. Johnson, supra, (2 Blkf. at 440). The money judgments which courts of equity sometimes awarded as incidental to their decrees of specific performance were not damages for breach of the contract. The equity court, in decreeing specific performance as of the date it should have been performed, “equalizes any losses occasioned by the delay [in performance] by offsetting them with money payments . . . [which is] more like an accounting between the parties than like an assessment of damages”. Anno. 7 A. L. R. 2d 1204, 1206 (quoted ante, p. 531.)
If plaintiffs’ demand for damages was merely a request for a money judgment to equalize the losses occasioned by the delay and to make the specific performance relate back to the date the contract should have been performed, then the trial court’s denial of specific performance was necessarily a denial of this incidental equalizing relief,9 and the judg*537ment rendered was a final appealable judgment because it disposed of all claims as to all parties. TR. 54(B). On its face, of course, it appears to be that and both parties, as well as the trial court, appear to have treated it as such.
If, after the entry of the decision denying equitable relief, plaintiffs had renewed their demand for a jury trial on their claim for damages and that renewed demand had been denied, we might now be faced with the question of whether we should remand the case to the nisi prim court for that trial. But there is nothing in the briefs to indicate that any renewed demand was made. Quite to the contrary, plaintiffs’ written argument characterizes the whole action as one “at law for breach of contract” with prayer for damages, asserting that “the fact that . . . plaintiffs further seek relief . . . that standing alone ... is synonymous with equitable remedy . .. . does not alter or transform plaintiffs’ complaint from an action at law to one of either exclusive equitable jurisdiction or of mixed law and equitable jurisdiction; plaintiffs were entitled by right to the trial of their action at law by a jury.”10
What specific error or errors relating to denial of jury trial (if any) were set forth in the plaintiffs’ motion to correct errors the briefs do not disclose. Assuming, arguendo, that errors were claimed in that motion consistent with plaintiffs’ written argument made here, plaintiffs have preserved no error.11 In thus erroneously treating their demands for *538equitable relief as merely incidental to their law action for damages for breach of contract and contending that the whole is triable by jury as of right they certainly invite the trial court and this court to find that plaintiffs have presented for adjudication but one action. And, clearly, if there is but one action, the prayer for relief which only, a court of equity prior to 1852 could grant indelibly marks- that one action as an action of exclusive equitable jurisdiction.12
The majority reaches the right result in holding that the trial court’s judgment should be affirmed.
Note. — Reported in 284 N. E. 2d 834.

. Quotation marks are used to indicate a paraphrasing of the first sentence of Trial Rule 38(A), “Cases triable by court and by jury.”

. The case of Fox v. Wallace, supra, did not involve a two-paragraph, two-theory, complaint, nor did it, therefore, involve any question of whether either party would have been entitled to a jury. The opinion did, however, cite (with apparent approval) the two New York cases from which I have previously quoted. However, the Appellate Court seems to have overlooked the exception quoted ante, p. 851, from Beck v. Allison, one of those New York cases, perhaps because of its devotion to the discredited doctrine that a plaintiff could recover, if at all, only on the theory of his complaint. See Morrison’s, etc. v. Southern Plaza, Inc. (1969), 252 Ind. 109, 121, 246 N. E. 2d 191, 199, 17 Ind. Dec. 166, 176.

. Appellants’ Brief, p. 66.

. Appellees’ Brief, p. 14. Appellants’ reply brief made no attempt to deny, answer, or avoid this argument.

. Majority opinion, ante, p. 520.

. Majority opinion, ante, p. 520.

. There may, of course, be practical reasons, such as avoiding the possibility of calling the same witnesses twice, for trying both the court case and the jury case at the same time. There may also be countervailing practicalities, such as an apparent probability that the jury may never have an issue of fact to resolve.

. When plaintiffs demanded specific performance they demanded a remedy which only a court of equity (prior to 1852) had power to grant. “[T]here is no power in a court of law to compel specific performance of any kind of a contract,” Acme Food Co. v. Older (1908), 64 W.Va. *536255, 61 S.E. 235, 17 L.R.A. (N.S.) 807, 819. “[T]he suit on the note can only be maintained, if at all, as being in equity to compel a specific performance. . . .” O’Kane v. Kiser (1865), 25 Ind. 168, 169. See also Guraly v. Tenta (1956), 126 Ind. App. 527, 132 N.E. 2d 725; Parks v. Koser (1955), 125 Ind. App. 585, 126 N.E. 2d 785; Marion Trucking Co. v. Harwood Trucking (1954), 125 Ind. App. 1, 116 N.E. 2d 636; Straus v. Yeager (1911), 48 Ind. App. 448, 93 N.E. 877.
This is not to say, of course, that merely because the prayer of plaintiffs’ complaint included a request for specific performance that they were entiled to a trial to determine whether it should be granted. It is to say that when a trial is held for that purpose, the ultimate question is one of exclusive equitable jurisdiction, i.e., whether a remedy that only equity can decree should be granted. Neither our State Constitution (Art. 1, §20) nor our implementing rule of procedure (TR. 38(A)) requires “causes ... of exclusive equitable jurisdiction” to be tried by jury.

. It is only where common law type relief was rendered by equity courts prior to 1852 as incidental to equitable relief that there can be *537constitutional validity to the statement that “if any essential part of a cause is exclusively of equitable cognizance, the whole is drawn into equity.” Towns v. Smith (1888), 115 Ind. 480, 481, 16 N. E. 811, 812. (That ease, a creditor’s bill, was apparently of that character.) If the “whole” was drawn in to equity prior to 1852, then the case is one of exclusive jurisdiction, triable by the court. If the “whole” was not so drawn in prior to 1852 and if, on denial of the claim to equitable relief, the plaintiff still had a remedy at law, he had a right to jury trial which must remain inviolate.

. Appellants’ brief, p. 66.

. TR. 59(G) provides, in part: “Issues . . . [except in appeals from interlocutory orders, orders appointing or refusing to appoint receivers, or orders in proceedings supplemental to execution] may be considered on appeal only when included in the motion to correct errors. .,
*538AP. 8.3(A) (7) provides, in part: “Each error assigned in the motion to correct errors that appellant intends to raise on appeal shall be set forth specifically [in the “argument” section of the appellants’ brief] and followed by the argument applicable thereto.” Further, AP. 8.3(A) concludes: “Any error alleged' on the motion to correct errors not treated as herein directed shall be deemed waived.”

. See No. 8.