Court Opinion

ID: 9623798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:43:41.846008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:50:36.264834
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(Dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent. The subjoined copy represents the sole issue in this case, —that of whether the document represents a personal guarantee by Anderson to pay corporate debts;

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The trial court allowed, over objection, the admission of parol evidence to determine the intentions of the parties on the theory or assumption that the document was ambiguous. I can see nothing ambiguous at all in this instrument. It clearly guar*108antees only the signatures of Chapman and Anderson. There is nary a word guaranteeing the payment of corporate debts or those of anyone else. Banks and others daily guarantee signatures on documents, but certainly would be startled to know that they were guaranteeing anything else,— surely not obligations of the signator to third persons, if the signature is genuine.
Concededly, the signature on the document here was genuine, but it was the signature of a corporation by its President, Anderson, and not by Anderson as an individual.1 There is no word in the instrument saying that Anderson would stand :good for the corporation, — but only for a genuine signature of another to bind the corporation. The only way anyone could construe this document otherwise would be to sail out of the four corners of the paper in a ship driven by winds of speculation.
If this case permits parol evidence in a case like this, we may as well scrap the parol evidence rule,2 — and for that matter, any written instrument, let the people simply say what their intentions were and fire, the scriveners.
Besides, to hold Anderson as a guarantor here would fly in the teeth of the Statute of Frauds,3 besides rewriting the contract of the parties.
CALLISTER, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HENRIOD, J.

. See St. Joseph Valley Bank v. Napoleon Motors Co., 230 Mich. 498, 202 N.W. 933 (1925); Salzman Sign Co. v. Beck, 10 N.Y.2d 63, 217 N.Y.S.2d 55, 176 N.E.2d 74 (1961).

. Jensen v. Rice, 7 Utah 2d 276, 323 P.2d 259 (1958).

. Title 25-54(2): “In the following cases every agreement shall be void unless such agreement, or some note or memorandum thereof, is in writing subscribed by the party to he charged, thereivith: * * * (2) Every promise to answer for the debt, default or miscarriage of another.” See Salzman v. Beck, footnote 1. (Emphasis added.)