Court Opinion

ID: 9476870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:07:46.894537+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:33.440568
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in Judge Russell’s opinion insofar as it deals with the denial of the plaintiff’s motion to amend its complaint. I dissent from its affirmance of partial summary judgment for the defendant.
I do not think that the last sentence in Paragraph 10 is so clearly applicable to a breach of warranty claim as to place it beyond construction by the factfinder.
The only contractual provisions before us are the “Terms and Conditions” printed upon the seller’s price quotation form. Those terms and conditions deal entirely with matters of price and delivery. There is no mention of warranties or potential liabilities for negligence. Since every other sentence in the ten paragraphs is concerned with price and delivery, I think it may reasonably be argued that the last sentence of Paragraph 10 is also exclusively concerned with such things. If the sentence may also be read as applicable to breach of warranty and negligence claims, its meaning is reasonably debatable and is to be determined by a factfinder, not by the court on a motion for partial summary judgment.
My reading of Paragraph 2 and the last sentence of Paragraph 10 is entirely harmonious. Each is fully operable in its own area.
Paragraph 2 provides that the seller shall not be liable for any delay in delivery resulting from a cause beyond its reasonable control. There is no reference to consequential damages; the seller is not to be liable for damages of any kind if there is delay for which it is not reasonably responsible.
I read the last sentence in Paragraph 10, on the other hand, as dealing with a delay in delivery for which the seller is responsible or with an unreasonable failure of the buyer to accept delivery. In those circumstances, the defaulting party is liable for direct damages but not for consequential damages.
The crucial sentence at the end of Paragraph 10 provides that neither party shall assert a claim for consequential damages against the other. In the context of deliv*282eries, that is a reasonable way to approach the prohibition of consequential damages, for the seller might conceivably make such a claim against the buyer if it unreasonably refused to accept delivery of specially manufactured machinery, or to pay for it. The language seems singularly inappropriate, however, if the focus of the parties was upon potential claims for negligent failure to warn of defects or for breach of warranty.
The construction given this sentence in the majority opinion may be a permissible one. I believe it is not the only permissible one. Its meaning should be for determination by the factfinder and not by the court on a motion for summary judgment.