Court Opinion

ID: 9639434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:17:46.225469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:18.442569
License: Public Domain

DENISON, Circuit Judge.
I find myself unable to concur. If the amended declaration is freed from conclusions and confined to fact allegations, the demurrer sufficiently presented the question whether there could be a judgment for the present value of an annuity to the plaintiff, continuing so long as she “lives and suffers.”
The parties made a contract by which, in the event of the plaintiff’s injury, defendant was to perform at future periods. The judgment, upon the theory of anticipatory breach, has transformed it into a contract for present performance. Unless there is clear and satisfactory reason, according to settled legal principles, the defendant should not be held liable for not doing something which it never agreed to do, and this is as true in regard to time of performance as to other particulars. A plaintiff, who wants now a payment which he agreed to wait for until next year, should show a clear right, not a doubtful one.
Roehm v. Horst is the leading ease in the United States. It declares that, where a contract is executory on both sides and is repudiated by one party, the other may presently have his damages assessed as for an anticipatory breach; but it excepts from that rule cases where the contract on the plaintiff’s part is not executory. The exception cannot be interpreted and applied without understanding the reason for it, and search for the reason for the exception must take us to the reason for the rule. This is not satisfactorily developed, as I think, in any judicial or text-book discussion which I have seen. The suggestion that there is an implied contract to keep the express contract in force, and that damages of this character are really assessed for breach of this implied contract, seems to me to be going a long way for an answer. 1 To my mind the most forcible reason for the rule of anticipatory damages is this:
In the ordinary case of mutually dependent executory contracts, the plaintiff may say to defendant: “True, I have no right to claim damages now for your nonperformance of what you agreed to do next year; but the meritorious reason for my inability is that you are not obliged to perform your part of next year’s contract, unless I also perform my part. Now, by your repudiation, you have put it out of my power further to perform, and hence you cannot be permitted to say that you have not received or will not receive that consideration for your future act, and there is no good reason why you should not pay now (less discount) the damages which would accrue next year.”
If this be the reason for the rule, it explains as well the exception. Where his part of the contract has been executed by the plaintiff, he has nothing to do but to wait, and to do so continues to be in his power. His position will not be prejudicially changed by defendant’s repudiation; and hence he will have no estoppel to rely upon to precipitate the defendant’s obligation. It follows that, not only by its authority, but upon sound principles, the exception made in Roehm v. Horst should be recognized and applied, and not dissipated by hesitant application.
I do not understand that a contract sued upon is executory, as against a plaintiff, unless it binds him to do something, so that an action may lie against him for specific performance, or for nonperformance.2 By that definition the contract here sued upon is not executory on the plaintiff’s part. She is merely obliged from time to time to furnish evidence, if and when she wishes payment; what she must do is, in kind, like presenting a note for payment at a particular place, although it is more burdensome in degree; after all, it is a condition, not an obligation.
Further, I do not find in the facts such an absolute repudiation of the contract as justifies the application of the anticipatory breach rule. Such a repudiation cannot be found in the final cancellation made by the insurance company; that cancellation was an act in express pursuance of the contract, and not in repudiation of it; it was a termination of future liability, and not at all a repudiation of any accrued and existing obligation. Nor can it be found, as I think, in the *698refusal to pay. What defendant really did was to deny that there was any breach which had obligated it to pay or which obligated it to pay any more. Defendant never has questioned the entire validity of the contract, or denied its continuing liability to pay anything which, under the contract, it ought to pay. While there are decisions which find the necessary basis in a mere denial or breach, I doubt whether they give due regard to what ought to be the character of a repudiation effective to create' an obligation inconsistent •with the express terms of the contract.
In my judgment, this ease illustrates the evils of laxity in permitting a premature recovery. In such a ease as this (as facts often. are, though possibly not in this case), plaintiff in a year or two may recover entirely or (if the ease is as bad as here claimed) is very likely not to live long. In either ease the true liability is for a short term; but the recovery has been upon the basis of the full expectation of -life of a healthy person, — though no error in this respect was duly saved.

 See Equitable Co. v. Western Co. (D. C.) 244 E. 485, 501.

 Even in Pierce v. Tennessee Co., 173 U. S. 1, 19 S. Ct. 335, 43 L. Ed. 591, the plaintiff was bound to continue to work as much as he could, and in the support-for-life cases there is usually an implied, if not express, promise of much cooperation by the one supported.