Court Opinion

ID: 9861351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:55:26.940041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:14.114512
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Daily, specially concurring: I concur in the result of this decision but not in the theory upon which it is based or in the unnecessary overruling of a long-established principle of law. Since 1904 the courts of this State have consistently held that specific performance of a real-estate contract may be denied where there is lack of vendor-vendee mutuality of remedy. Although the original pronouncement of this doctrine in Gage v. Cummings, 209 Ill. 120, stated that such mutuality must exist at the time the contract was executed, this rule has since become modified in subsequent decisions so as to require such mutuality, not at the outset of the initial obligation, but only upon commission of subsequent acts. Thus it has been held that specific performance may be demanded where a loan contingency was involved (Kovacs v. Krol, 385 Ill. 592), where the original contract has been assigned (Lewis v. McCreedy, 378 Ill. 264), where the vendor’s title was originally incomplete (Kuhn v. Eppstein, 219 Ill. 154), or where the unbound party submits to the jurisdiction of the court so as to create mutuality. Laegeler v. Bartlett, 10 Ill.2d 478. In the present case it is quite likely that Manilow, by ordering the execution of the contract and by his repeated adoption and ratification thereof, was bound by the agreement prior to the commencement of the present action, and even if he were not, by filing a counterclaim herein he certainly became subject thereto in accordance with the Laegeler decision. Therefore, for this reason the lower court erred in dismissing count 2 of the complaint and the counterclaim, and no cause whatsoever exists for the complete re-examination of the mutuality doctrine. It is charged that the term “mutuality” is a loaded word designed only to hamstring justice with a “nonexistent lawsuit.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The mutuality doctrine extends back for some 100 years and asserts an equitable principle of fair play by requiring that a litigant must have done equity by subjecting himself to the obligations of an agreement before demanding that his adversary do likewise. Such a doctrine, having been considered in scores of cases and by many learned judges of this court, should be discarded only when the case at hand demands it and then only upon the strongest evidence of its inadequacy. The present opinion stems from neither circumstance and, furthermore, disregards the factual situations which led to the decisions in the Gage and Wloczewski cases. We must at all times remember that not only are we deciding a case for the parties of today but we are also setting a guide for the attorneys and courts of tomorrow. To obliterate the long-standing doctrine of mutuality of remedy and to say, in its stead, that specific performance will be granted if “injustice and oppression” do not result, is to furnish an extremely vague and pliable guide in what was once a settled field of the law. It is true that legal doctrines should be re-examined and modified to meet changing conditions and circumstances, but it is likewise true in our system of jurisprudence that the doctrine of stare decisis requires our courts to adhere to precedents and not to needlessly unsettle things which are established. I am not prepared to say that the instant case presents either an impelling reason for rejecting the defense of lack of mutuality of remedy, or any basis for overruling the Gage and Wloczewski decisions.