Court Opinion

ID: 9683674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:34:55.56895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:49.502037
License: Public Domain

Griffin Smith, Chief Justice, dissenting. I would affirm the • judgment. It is true that appellant undertook to prove a subsequent oral contract, but when pressed on cross-examination he invariably fell back upon the agency agreement. Furthermore, his knowledge of the business in hand was sufficient to put any reasonable person on notice that the so-called conversations with Davis could not amount to company representations constituting variants from the written contract. There was no contradiction of testimony that any arrangements made by Davis — conceding, for the sake of argument, that the conversations occurred in circumstances where the construction given by Yahraus could attach — would have to be ratified by the home office. There are instances (and this is one of them) where the testimony of an interested party is so vague, uncertain, contradictory, and altogether unreliable, that a trial court is warranted in finding that it is wanting in that substantial quality necessary to sustain a verdict. I agree with Judge Cockrill that the legal sufficiency of the evidence relied upon became a judicial question, hence a verdict for the defendant was properly instructed.