Court Opinion

ID: 9449096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:56:27.091495+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:41.833918
License: Public Domain

WHITAKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I agree that, as originally drawn, the contract required the painting only of those interior masonry surfaces which were indicated on the drawings. However, after the words, “indicated on the drawings to be painted”, had been eliminated, the portion of the contract pertinent to the issue before us read:
“Masonry surfaces.- — Interior exposed masonry surfaces shall be painted in accordance with the attached Figure 1.”
This was a modification of the contract to which both parties agreed. As so modified, there can be no doubt that such a contract required the plaintiff to paint all interior exposed masonry surfaces.
As the majority opinion states, the resident engineer, in June 1956, after the work had started, forwarded to plaintiff a number of changes in the specifications and requested from him a bid covering the proposed changes. Among the changes proposed was the deletion of the words, “indicated on the drawings to be painted,” from the provision of the specifications with reference to painting interior exposed masonry surfaces. Upon receipt of this request, plaintiff submitted a certain figure, which the Government accepted. From this there resulted a contract between the parties which required plaintiff to paint all interior masonry surfaces, unless there was a mutual mistake of fact.
Plaintiff does not deny that he knew these words had been deleted, but he says he did not understand the significance of this. Why he did not understand it, I am at a loss to understand. All he had to do was to read this provision of the specifications with these words stricken. Anybody — certainly a contractor of the experience of this plaintiff — reading this provision of the specifications with these words deleted, would know that the contract required that all interior masonry surfaces should be painted. The long and short of the matter is plaintiff was careless. We cannot reform a contract because a party did not exercise due care in reading it.
But, even if plaintiff made an excusable mistake, we do not think the contracting officer was chargeable with knowledge thereof. It does appear that the contracting officer knew that plaintiff had not set down any specific sum for the extra painting which the modification required ; but, it still does not appear that the contracting officer was aware that the plaintiff did not understand that he would be required, under the modified contract, to do more painting than he had originally contemplated. Unless the contracting officer knew this, there was no mutual mistake of fact. The contracting officer may have thought that the plaintiff was willing to absorb the cost of doing the additional painting, or he may have thought the plaintiff figured on painting all the interior masonry walls in the first place. The plaintiff never told him, and he had no way of knowing, why the plaintiff failed to include any specific sum for the additional painting. He never knew that the plaintiff was unaware that he was to be required to do more painting under the modified contract than he had originally contemplated; or, if so, why he did not include a specific figure for this work.
This is not a case for an equitable adjustment under the changes article of the contract. The party had already agreed on the adjustment, after the contracting *513officer had proposed the changes to be made and had asked the plaintiff for a bid on those changes and the plaintiff had submitted his bid. The result was a modified contract, agreed to in advance of doing the work.
In my opinion plaintiff is not entitled to recover.