Court Opinion

ID: 9624666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:12:58.489234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:52.270109
License: Public Domain

SHINN, P. J.
I dissent. I think there was justification in the evidence for the findings of the trial court with respect to the custom. I do not think it was necessary that there should be direct evidence that the parties knew of the custom. The Restatement, Contracts, section 248, page 352, says: “Where both parties to a transaction are engaged in the same occupation, or belong to the same group of persons, the usages of that occupation or group are operative, unless one of the parties knows or has reason to know that the other party has an inconsistent intention.” There was evidence that it was “the custom then of the country, with the termination of the agreement or lease, whichever you would have, that we always figure that if they sell the place or for some reason they take it away from you, why we always figure they should get paid the going price whatever that is, for summer fallowing.” The witnesses were testifying to a custom applicable to a district in which summer fallow was the rule. Defendant acquired the land in May, 1944. Plaintiffs continued to farm it until 1953 and they summer-fallowed it as they had agreed to do. Their agreements from year to year, as found by the court, did not purport to define the rights of the parties in the circumstances that developed upon termination of the tenancy. The custom with respect to summer fallow was of the very essence of the relationship of the parties in the absence of any agreement inconsistent with the custom. It was but a reasonable and natural custom that a tenant of dry farmed land who expected his tenancy to continue should either be permitted to crop land that he had summer-fallowed or receive compensation for his work.
Defendant had permitted plaintiffs to farm her land for nine years. This was sufficient to warrant a presumption of fact that she had knowledge of the custom, and plaintiffs could scarcely have been ignorant of it in view of their long experience of farming in the area. To my mind it seems more reasonable for the court to have inferred that the parties had knowledge of the custom than to have inferred the contrary.
The judgment is an eminently fair one and I think it should be affirmed.