Court Opinion

ID: 9696507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:49:43.982128+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:30.649864
License: Public Domain

DAY, J.
(dissenting). I dissent. The majority opinion correctly states, “The only question is whether her resignation is somehow justified.” I would hold that it was.
Elaine Lukaszewski left her employment with the school board. She suffered from high blood pressure and had been treated for several years by her physician for the condition. She claimed her hypertension increased due to stress caused when the Board refused to cancel her teaching contract. Stress can cause a precipitous rise in blood pressure. High blood pressure can bring on damage to other organs of the body.
She was upset over what she perceived was the unreasonable attitude of her employer in refusing to cancel her contract. Following an unpleasant exchange with the Board’s Director of Special Education, Mr. Morrelle, she went to her physician. He found her blood pressure to be 180 over 100 which he testified was very high. He advised her to rest and to get out of the situation that *209was causing her symptoms which she properly interpreted to mean “quit the job.” He also told her that her elevated blood pressure made it dangerous for her to drive the ninety miles round-trip each day, that commuting from her home in Mequon to Sheboygan Falls entailed.
The trial court and the majority of this court conclude she could have obviated the danger of driving by moving to Sheboygan Falls. But the fact is that would not have eliminated her illness nor the hazards to her health that her condition posed. There is not a shred of medical evidence that her blood pressure problems would be cured or appreciably alleviated if she moved from her home to Sheboygan Falls.
Once the dangerous hypertension is established, and here the only medical testimony did just that, it should follow that one should be relieved of a contractual obligation for services unless malingering is shown. In this case no one denies she has the condition. But, the trial court says, the condition was one “she had created,” which the majority on this court refer to as “self induced.” The majority here seized on the rationale that illness that is “self induced” is somehow less worthy of judicial consideration than illness caused by others, or by outside forces over which the patient has no control.
It seems clear from the trial judge’s comments that if he had found her physical condition had been caused by the Board’s “harassment,” he would have let her out of the contract. This is the only logical conclusion from the statement by the trial judge that, “The Court finds that the defendant’s medical excuse was a result of the stress condition she had created by an attempted repudiation of her contract, and was not the product of any unsubstantiated, so-called, harrassment [sic] by the plaintiff’s board.”
*210In either instance, whether “caused” by the Board or “self induced” because of her gnawing feeling of being unfairly treated, the objective symptoms would be the same.
Either, in my opinion, should justify termination of the contract where the physical symptoms are medically certifiable as they admittedly are here.
The majority makes the following assertion, “It would be fundamentally unfair to allow a breaching party to escape liability because of a health danger which by his or her own fault has precluded performance.”
Happily no authority is cited for this sweeping statement which means that it will be easier to ignore it, gloss over it, “distinguish” it or overrule it in the future. Under this new found axiom, could a concert violinist under contract be sued to cover any added costs of his replacement if he lost an arm in an accident where he was found 100 percent negligent? Or could another party to a personal service contract be held liable if he was unable to perform because of a debilitating illness clearly caused by negligent health habits ?
The majority cites a hundred year old case, Jennings v. Lyons, 39 Wis. 553 (1876), for two propositions:
“A health danger will not excuse nonperformance of a contractual obligation when the danger is caused by the nonperforming party. See Jennings v. Lyons, 39 Wis. at 557-58. Nor will a health condition or danger which was foreseeable when the contract was entered into justify its breach.” (Supra, p. 203.)
Jennings is cited by the majority to bolster its position. The case is not really in point. In that case a, husband and wife contracted to work on a farm for one year for the sum of $300. He was to do outside work and she to do housework. After four and one-half months she had to leave to have a baby and the husband had to go with her. The employer refused to pay either *211of them anything and they brought suit to recover for the time they had worked. The trial court instructed the jury that if at the time the plaintiff and his wife quit working for defendant, the wife was sick and unable to do her part of the work, plaintiff was not bound to a further performance of the contract and was entitled to recover the value of his and his wife’s services for the time they actually worked. The trial court found for the plaintiff.
This court reversed and held that the defendant did not have to pay them anything. The court held that the rule is that performance is excused:
“. . . as where performance has been rendered impossible by an act of God, by the act of the law, or by the act of the other party.the obligation is discharged if he is prevented by sickness or death from performing it . . . sickness or death is generally recognized as an act of God in such a sense that it excuses the nonperformance, and a recovery is allowed upon a quantum merit. . . .” 39 Wis. at 557.
This court said that since the husband must have known his wife was four months pregnant when they took the job and that she would be unable to complete the year of work, therefore no recovery was allowed. This court said “For when performance becomes impossible by reason of contingencies which should have been foreseen and provided against in the contract, the promisor is held answerable.” 39 Wis. at 558. Nowhere did the Jennings court say “a health danger will not excuse nonperformance of a contractual obligation when the danger is caused by the nonperforming party.”
The precedential value of Jennings is doubtful but to the extent the rules stated may still be valid it provides no support for the majority. Here there is an illness, “an act of God,” there is nothing in the record to show that the severe increase in Elaine Lukaszewski's hyperten*212sion was foreseeable when she signed the contract. Thus, even under Jennings, the teacher should be excused from performance.
Hypertension is a health problem that when caused by stress, however induced, may require a job change. That is what occurred here.
But the majority has discovered what it apparently regards as a “fall back” position, that Elaine Lukaszew-ski really did not resign her teaching job for health reasons after all.
The majority says: “In short, the decisions [of the trial court] indicate that the court believed Lukaszewski resigned for reasons other than her health.” (Emphasis added.) (Supra, p. 205.)
The word “indicate” has picked up increasing popularity in the jargon of the legal profession in the past few years mostly, I believe, because it does not say anything one can pin down precisely. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961) gives a wide range of possible meanings to the word “indicate,” among them are: “SUGGEST, INTIMATE, HINT . . . INDICATE signifies to serve as a sign or symptom pointing to (the inference or action), stressing only a general, unspecified connection between subject and object . . .”
“Indicate” seems to fall short on the definiteness required for a “finding of fact” by a trial court.
The first time the case came to the court of appeals they sent it back for further “findings” and it is the “original” remarks from the bench plus additional written comments by the judge on remand that form the bases for the appeal and this review.
What the trial court said was that the desire to take the better job brought on the physical symptoms when release from her contract by the Board was refused.
If the trial court had found that she quit merely for the better job and not because of her health problems *213brought on by the high blood pressure, this would be an entirely different case. However, that is not what the trial court found in my opinion. The trial court found her medical problems were self induced and concluded they were therefore unworthy of consideration.
I would reverse the court of appeals decision that held she breached her contract.
Because I would hold that on this record there was no breach, I would not reach the damage question.