Court Opinion

ID: 9703138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:42:09.46652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:45.976071
License: Public Domain

FINE, J.
¶ 16. (dissenting).
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
*751He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations 756 (15th ed. 1980), attributes the verse to Hughes Mearns. Perhaps the Wisconsin Education Association Council feels the same way about "arbitration." The Majority uses the word "arbitration" forty-three times, "arbitrator" thirty-one times, "arbitrate" twelve times, and "arbitrating" once. Yet, none of these words appears in the Agreement it purports to interpret and apply. To reframe Mearns's verse from the Council's point of view:
. As we were going into court
We met a word of last resort.
It was a word we did not use.
And now it seems that we will lose.
I respectfully submit that the Majority reads into the 1978 Agreement between the Council and Madison Teachers, Inc. (the National Education Association was the third party to the Agreement) something that is not there, even though they may have used the word "arbitration" as a layperson's shorthand reference to dispute resolution.
"The language of a contract must be understood to mean what it clearly expresses. A court may not depart from the plain meaning of a contract where it is free from ambiguity, [citation omitted.] In construing the terms of a contract, where the terms are plain and unambiguous, it is the duty of the court to construe it as it stands, even though the parties may have placed a different construction on it. [citation omitted.] It seems to us that when parties to a contract adopt a provision which does not contravene a principle of public policy, and which contains no element of ambiguity, the court *752has no right, by a process of interpretation, to relieve one of them from any disadvantageous terms which he has actually made."
Dykstra v. Arthur G. McKee & Co., 92 Wis. 2d 17, 38, 284 N.W.2d 692, 702-703 (Ct. App. 1979) (brackets by Dykstra), aff'd, 100 Wis. 2d 120, 301 N.W.2d 201 (1981).1 *753In my view, the Agreement here is not ambiguous: it is not an "arbitration agreement"; rather, it is an agreement to have Ronald W. Haughton, and only Haughton, resolve disputes under that Agreement.
¶ 17. The only language of the Agreement as it relates to the resolution of disputes arising under the contract is:
As a demonstration of their will to make the relationship work well and effectively, the parties hereto agree to the following expedited method of resolving all disputes which arise over the interpretation or application of the Agreement.
a. Professor Ronald W Haughton is hereby mutually agreed upon by the parties to have final and binding authority to decide any disputes between the parties over the interpretation or application of this Agreement.
b. Professor Haughton will meet the parties at an agreed upon location and time whenever there are pending disputes upon which he is requested to rule.
c. After hearing the positions of the parties, with *754witnesses if they so opt, Professor Haughton will issue a prompt decision in writing to the parties. The effort will be to issue a decision on the day the grievance is heard. Such decision will be postmarked not later than seven days following the hearing at which the grievance is presented.
d. Professor Haughton's expenses in actions stemming from the above, will be paid [a payment mechanism is then set out].
Unlike a traditional agreement to arbitrate, the Agreement here neither designates Haughton as an "arbitrator" nor provides for his replacement in case he is no longer available.
¶ 18. Significantly, the Agreement does provide for replacement of others involved in the resolution of possible disputes under it. Thus, a "United Staff Services Program," referred to in the Agreement by its acronym "UniServ," is designated as a facilitator between Madison Teachers on one hand, and the Council and the Association on the other. The Agreement provides that "[s]hould a UniServ position become vacant, [Madison Teachers] shall select the person to fill the aforesaid position." Further,
If, during the term of this Agreement, the position of Uniserv Representative becomes vacant, [Madison Teachers] shall, within ten (10) days after such vacancy occurs, either employ a successor UniServ Representative, in accordance with the procedure set forth [earlier in the Agreement], or the parties hereto shall agree on an otherwise mutually acceptable procedure to be followed pending employment of a successor.
If the parties are unable to employ a successor or agree on an otherwise mutually acceptable procedure within the time limit set forth [] above, any party may, upon ten (10) days written notice to the other parties, *755terminate that portion of this agreement relating to the position or positions which have become vacant.
It is inconceivable to me that such careful drafting to cover a possible vacancy in the facilitating organization would not have been replicated in connection with Haughton, the person invested with the authority of "resolving all disputes which arise over the interpretation or application of the Agreement." That the parties did not provide for a similar mechanism if Haughton could no longer resolve disputes under the Agreement; that he was never designated as an "arbitrator"; and that the Agreement refers to him by name every time it discusses resolution of disputes is unassailable plain-language evidence that the Agreement was not an agreement to "arbitrate," and that Haughton was not designated to "arbitrate" disputes thereunder. Rather, he, and he alone, was chosen to resolve disputes under the Agreement because, apparently, the parties trusted him personally. That the parties may have agreed to permit someone to stand in for Haughton when they believed he was temporarily unavailable does not transmute the resolution-of-dispute agreement into a formal "arbitration agreement" governed by Wis. Stat. ch. 788.
¶ 19. In sum, the Agreement was executed in September of 1978, and Haughton was the very essence of its dispute-resolution system. With him no longer available, that essence is gone. In my view, it trumps the parties' intent in 1978 by saying that someone other than Haughton can now be his surrogate. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

 The Majority applies Wisconsin law. Yet, as the Majority recognizes, the Agreement itself provides: "This Agreement shall be governed by, and all of its provisions construed in accordance with, the law of the District of Columbia." The law of the District Columbia as to how to interpret contracts is essentially as it is in Wisconsin. Thus, contracts that are not ambiguous are applied as they are written — using "ordinary speech" as the touchstone of interpretation. Stevens v. United Gen. Title Ins. Co., 801 A.2d 61, 66 (D.C. 2002). Further, a contract is not "ambiguous" merely because the parties executing it do not agree on what it means. Holland v. Hannan, 456 A.2d 807, 815 (D.C. 1983). The District of Columbia statute governing arbitrations is at DC Code §§ 16-4301 to 16-4319. The parties' choice-of-law agreement governs how the contract will be construed. See Madison Beauty Supply, Ltd. v. Helene Curtis, Inc., 167 Wis. 2d 237, 245, 481 N.W.2d 644, 648 (Ct. App. 1992). In Madison Beauty Supply, the parties acquiesced in the application of Wis. Stat. ch. 788 to interpret what both parties in that case agreed was an agreement to arbitrate. Thus, Madison Beauty Supply observed:
We conclude that the parties have chosen ch. 788, Stats., as the procedure for enforcing their agreement to arbitrate. We recognize that sec. 24 of the Distribution Agreement provides that the agreement "shall be construed in accordance with the law of the State of Illinois." However, we conclude that by this clause, the parties did not intend to adopt the Illinois statutory procedures for enforcement of their agreement to arbitrate. The choice-of-law clause controls only the construction of the Agreement. We consider that by proceeding in a Wisconsin circuit court under ch. 788, the parties have elected that the procedures of that chapter shall govern the enforcement of the arbitration clause in their agreement.
*753Ibid, (emphasis added). Here, of course, only one party contends that the Agreement is an "arbitration agreement." Thus, the parties here, unlike the parties in Madison Beauty Supply, have not used a Wisconsin court to apply chapter 788, but, rather, one party, the Council, argues that chapter 788 has nothing to do with this case. That presents a substantive issue of contract interpretation, what Madison Beauty Supply called "construction of the Agreement," id., 167 Wis. 2d at 245, 481 N.W2d at 648, and we should be using the law of the District of Columbia, because the parties agreed that law would govern the construction of their contract.