Court Opinion

ID: 9702071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:52:41.737916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:33.232772
License: Public Domain

Flynn, C. J., and Capotosto, J.,
dissenting. We are unable to agree with the majority opinion because in our judgment the evidence, when read as a whole, shows that the contract in question was not an agreement solely for the sale of genealogical information, intelligently and freely made by competent parties standing on an equal footing.
We recall that the trial justice who heard the cause died before rendering his decision and that thereafter the parties agreed to submit the cause to another justice of the superior court for determination merely upon the record previously made. It is obvious that in weighing the evidence the latter justice did not have the usual assistance of having seen and heard the witnesses while testifying. Therefore his decision does not come to us with the persuasive force that it ordinarily would have in this court on appeal. In the circumstances we are free to weigh the evidence independently of such decision and to draw our own conclusions from the record as it stands.
*106We concede that parties may legally enter into a contract for the sale of genealogical information provided, however, that the agreement is strictly limited to the sale of such information and nothing more, and further, that it is intelligently and freely made by competent parties standing on an equal footing. This rule is at the basis of the decisions in Kaplan v. Suher, 254 Mass. 180, 185, and in Wedgerfield v. De Bernardy, 24 T.L.R. 497, upon which the majority relies. But neither of those cases involves any real conflict of evidence and both present factual situations that differ materially from the one in the case at bar.
Moreover, it is also worthy of note that in the Wedgerfield case the court quotes with approval the appropriate test which it had set out and applied in the earlier case of Rees v. De Bernardy, 12 T.L.R. 412, where the agreement was held unenforceable and void for the reasons therein stated. In our judgment the facts in that case parallel in all pertinent and material aspects the circumstances appearing, either by direct evidence or by way of reasonable inference, in the record now before us. We forego referring to the facts upon which we base our conclusion because a reading of the whole transcript is necessary to obtain an adequate picture of respondents’ conduct, and also because the Rees case discloses many details similar to those appearing in evidence in the case at bar. Here, as in that case, respondents’ conduct leading up to the making of the agreement and from that time to the termination of the transaction convinces us that on the evidence in the present record complainant was the innocent victim of overreaching and other inequitable practices. In such a situation, as disclosed by this record, the rule hereinbefore stated should be applied in the same manner and extent as in Rees v. De Bernardy, supra.
It is therefore our opinion that the complainant is entitled to the relief prayed for and that the decree appealed from should be reversed.
*107OCTOBER 24, 1952.
Wilfrid E. McKenna, Augustus Nasmith, of New Jersey Bar, for complainant.
Sherwood & Clifford, Sidney Clifford, Raymond E. Jordan, for respondents.
On Motion eor Reargument.
Per Curiam. After our opinion in the above cause was filed, the complainant requested and received permission to present a motion for leave to reargue. Pursuant thereto she has filed such a motion, stating therein certain reasons on which she bases her contention that justice requires a reargument of the cause. We have carefully considered those reasons and a majority of the court are of the opinion that they suggest no point which we have not already considered or which in the circumstances warrants such re-argument.
The motion is denied, and on October 31, 1952 the parties may present to this court for approval a form of decree, in accordance with the opinion, to be entered in the superior court.