Court Opinion

ID: 9474986
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:14:10.286688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:26.646106
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I am unable to agree with the majority that the contract in dispute in this case is so unambiguous as to admit of only one reasonable construction. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
As an initial matter I note that this case does not present us with the issue whether Amtrak may evict its tenant Horn & Har-dart. Indeed, Horn & Hardart has already been displaced. Rather, the issue is the extent to which Amtrak is liable to Horn & Hardart for damages resulting from the already-completed eviction.
In the usual case when a landlord evicts his tenant in violation of a lease he assumes the burden of compensating his tenant for the breach. The parties, of course, may alter this arrangement either by allowing the landlord to evict the tenant without violating the lease or by providing that the landlord may evict the tenant without liability in only a narrow range of circumstances. In this case Horn & Hardart argues that the parties agreed to the latter, allowing Amtrak to terminate the lease only in a very narrow range of circumstances. This does not mean that unless those circumstances are met Amtrak is burdened with the presence of Horn & Hardart’s restaurants. Amtrak may proceed either through its condemnation power or, as in this case, through an arguable violation of the lease to rid itself of its unwanted tenant. In either case Amtrak must pay damages to its tenant. But surely that is not such an unreasonable result; landlords and tenants often agree to be bound in leases without termination clauses.
Horn & Hardart does not rest its case on a reading of the term “Corporate purpose” alone. Indeed, it specifically acknowledged both in the trial court and on appeal that the term “Corporate purpose” might, in the abstract, include the proposed renovation. See Transcript of Proceedings (April 29, 1985) at 34-35; Reply Brief for Appellant at 2-3. Rather it argues that regardless of *361the scope of the term “Corporate purpose” the court must examine the nexus between that purpose and the termination of Horn & Hardart’s leases. See Reply Brief for Appellant at 2-3 (“Whether termination of Horn & Hardart’s leases is ‘required’ for Amtrak’s ‘Corporate purposes,’ however, is a wholly separate issue, and one that greatly restricts Amtrak’s right to terminate.”) (emphasis in original).
The District Court and the majority find that “required” means “reasonably necessary.” Although I wholly agree that the “reasonably necessary” construction of the challenged contract clause might reflect the intent of the parties to this contract, I am unable to agree that this construction represents the only possible reasonable construction of the contract. As Horn & Hardart argues, this clause might also mean that Amtrak may only terminate the lease when use of the space is required for a permissible corporate purpose. The majority’s construction of this contract requires this court to assume that Horn & Hardart entered into this long-term contract, made large investments protected only by limited cancellation premium clauses, and left itself open to eviction whenever Amtrak decided that the use of the space was “reasonably necessary” for its general purposes. Although Horn & Hardart might have agreed to such a contractual relationship, it is by no means clear to me that it did not intend, through the use of the word “require,” to place more stringent limitations upon the right of termination. Certainly I would not reach such a conclusion without consideration of extrinsic evidence bearing on the intent of the parties. Moreover, I note that “require” and “reasonably necessary” are hardly synonyms. Had the parties intended the contract to allow termination whenever Amtrak found it “reasonably necessary” to further one of its corporate purposes, they could easily have incorporated such language. Thus, because the contract is reasonably susceptible of different reasonable interpretations, I would hold that summary judgment was inappropriate and would remand this case for trial. See Papago Tribal Utility Authority v. FERC, 723 F.2d 950, 955 (D.C. Cir.1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1241, 104 S.Ct. 3511, 82 L.Ed.2d 820 (1984).
Because the majority reaches the opposite result, I respectfully dissent.