Court Opinion

ID: 9520812
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:50:39.790501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:58.238138
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE CRAVEN, dissenting: To avoid what I consider an unfair result, I would reverse the trial court’s judgment and remand the cause for a trial on the merits of the first two counts. By mechanically applying the rules regarding consideration and parol evidence to the covenants in this lease, the majority ignores the actual effect of the defendants’ conduct and assertions. When the plaintiff signed the lease she was assured, according to her complaint, that the door and porch would be repaired. The majority would exclude those assurances as violating the parol evidence rule. Yet the defendants’ subsequent conduct in paying for or making repairs could have only reinforced the plaintiff’s belief that the porch and door would also be repaired. I would find that the promises and conduct effectively negated the lease term that ostensibly imposed the burden of repair on the tenant. I would find consideration for those promises in the plaintiff’s signing the lease; the signing and the promising should be viewed as parts of the same transaction. The defendants’ following conduct in making repairs makes this parol evidence especially reliable. The lease here was residential, not commercial; the plaintiff heard the promises and was then told to sign the form. An alternative source of consideration is the plaintiff’s reliance on the defendants’ oral promises to repair. Although the complaint does not use the word “reliance,” paragraph 7 of count I implies that the plaintiff depended on the promises. That paragraph says: “That on or about the 4th day of November, 1977, said Plaintiff advised the Defendant, by and through its agents, servants and/or employees, acting within the scope of their agency, service and/or employment, that certain conditions existed in reference to a porch and storm door at the only means of ingress and egress to the trailer located at 3146 Vicki Court, as stated in more specificity in Paragraph 9 hereof and the subparagraphs attendant thereto, and was assured by said agents, servants and/or employees on numerous occasions, both prior to and subsequent to the execution of said lease, that the defective conditions complained of would in fact be repaired by said lessor, although said repairs were never made.” Section 33 of the Civil Practice Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1977, ch. 110, par. 33) requires a liberal construction of the pleadings. Reading the magic word “reliance” into this complaint surely does not strain the rule of liberal construction. The result I recommend is hardly novel or surprising. In Antonsen v. Bay Ridge Savings Bank (1944), 292 N. Y. 143, 54 N.E.2d 338, a tenant recovered in tort after showing that she had notified the landlord of the injurious defect, which arose during the term of the lease, and that she had relied on the landlord’s assurances that it would be repaired. A similar result was reached in Noble v. Marx (1948), 298 N. Y. 106, 81 N.E.2d 40, where the lease contained a clause requiring the tenant to maintain the premises in good repair. The tenant had called to the landlord’s attention the defect, a hole in the floor, before signing the lease. Although the evidencé was unclear on whether the landlord’s agent had promised that the hole would be repaired, the tenant recovered in tort for her personal injuries. For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.