Court Opinion

ID: 9532290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:19:59.455872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:43.536492
License: Public Domain

TAYLOR, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
In this ease, negotiations for settlement had been going on for months. Counsel for plaintiffs does not dispute the City’s declaration that all prior negotiations had been for a sum certain inclusive of all damages, costs, and attorney’s fees. Thirty minutes before the case was to come on for non-jury trial, plaintiffs were presented with a written, section 1101 offer to allow judgment to be taken in plaintiffs’ favor, in the total amount of $25,000.
As the case was called for trial, counsel and the court engaged in a conversation in which the terms of the settlement were discussed on the record. When plaintiffs’ counsel indicated his clients would apply for costs and attorney’s fees in addition to the sum recited in the offer, the City protested on grounds that the negotiations had always been for an all-inclusive amount, and that counsel for plaintiffs and for the City understood the offer to be all-inclusive. The City objected and requested permission to withdraw or revoke the offer. The trial court denied the request.
I disagree with the majority’s interpretation of legislative intent underlying section 1101 as precluding withdrawal, modification, or revocation of an offer to allow judgment under any and all circumstances. Courts have a duty to render interpretations of laws as will best serve the ends of justice. It should not be presumed to have been within the legislature’s intent to enact a law having an unjust result.
The interpretation of section 1101 offered by the majority would preclude withdrawal of an offer containing a misplaced decimal point. That interpretation would also allow a party who receives an offer the day before trial, then loses at trial, to nonetheless accept the offer before the expiration of five days. Further, it would allow one who receives an offer two days before trial to accept the offer two days into a trial that is not going as well as expected. Such results clearly could not have been intended by the legislature in drafting section 1101, but the majority’s interpretation of the statute in today’s opinion would appear to condone just such results.
In construing a statute, courts generally may not read into the statute that which is not within the manifest intention of the legislature as gathered from the act itself, and a statute should not be construed any more broadly or given any greater effect than its terms require. Huffman v. Oklahoma Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 281 P.2d 436 (Okla.1955). In section 1101, there is an absence of any language which dictates that offers to allow judgment are irrevocable. Here, the facts show that a fair and just result would have been served by allowing revocation of the offer to allow judgment. The failure of the legislature to include a specific provision should not open the door for one litigant to take unfair technical advantage of an opponent who is attempting to utilize the benefit of the statute in the manner in which it was intended.
I would hold that the trial court abused its discretion. Under these facts, I believe the trial court should have allowed the City to withdraw the offer, declared the offer a nullity for all purposes, and then proceeded with the non-jury trial. Neither party would have been prejudiced. Under these circumstances, I would reverse and remand.