Court Opinion

ID: 9481827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:32:55.795501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:36.086697
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
What divides the panel is whether genuine issues of material fact exist to prevent the proper entry of summary judgment. I find that no genuine issues exist and would affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment.
That I disagree with my brothers of the majority is not to demean their very respectable analysis. This is a summary judgment matter presenting a close question of whether the appellants have met their factual burden of rebutting the mov-ant’s supporting data. It is difficult to decide, in Holmes’ phrase, where the axe should fall, because my brothers and I are expressing value judgments.
We are governed by beliefs about facts more than by abstract rules. We derive these beliefs more from practical standards and views about the allocation of competence between judge and jury than by logically determinable or empirically observable data. We are deciding, I suppose, what bubbles — intellectual, philosophical and jurisprudential — are at the moment most in need of pricking.1
I gather that the majority hold that there is no dispute concerning the existence of a binding agreement. It would be extremely difficult to hold otherwise because by writing and by oral testimony the appellants have conceded the existence of a binding agreement. In their letter of May 5, 1987, appellants Jackson Hole Ski Corporation and Paul McCollister suggested minor changes to Deepwater Investments’ draft of the agreement. They presented the letter as an “interim agreement pending final closing of this transaction.” Brief for Appellee at Tab A, p. 1. One of their proposed changes was a paragraph setting forth the governing law: "This Agreement shall be construed in accordance with and the remedies arising from this agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming.” Id. at 6, If 11. On May 6, 1987, Deepwater agreed to the terms of this interim agreement.
To be sure, additional documents needed to be executed, but the interim agreement *1113expressed a complete meeting of the minds as to the contours of the agreement, as evidenced by McCollister’s testimony:
Q.There were to be further documents and a closing and the actual issuance of shares?
A. That’s right. Yes, sir.
Q. But you weren’t in any doubt that the deal was as set forth in that document?
A. That’s correct, sir. That’s correct.
Tr. 3/1-2/88, at 76.
Instead, the majority conclude that genuine issues of material fact exist concerning the structure of the transaction: “Certainly, paragraph 4 of the interim agreement, including the ‘sell, or otherwise transfer, to another corporation’ language, is something less than clear and unambiguous.” At 1111-12. I find no lack of clarity whatsoever.
The parties do not dispute that Deepwa-ter would invest only in the ski resort and not in Jackson Hole Ski’s other real estate holdings. Those holdings were to be sold to another corporation. There is no ambiguity here.
Jackson Hole Ski and McCollister would like to insert some ambiguity in this case because after receiving $3,600,000 for investment in Jackson Hole Ski, and incidently receiving all the financial benefits from such investment without issuing one share of stock, they discovered that the ski resort would run into a substantial federal tax problem by selling or transferring the non-mountain real estate to another corporation. So they decided to renege on the deal. For the millions they had received for stock in Jackson Hole Ski, they then proposed, contrary to the terms of the agreement, to issue Deepwater shares of stock in a subsidiary they would form. The district court saw through this sham. The agreement provided that Deepwater would receive stock in Jackson Hole Ski and not in a subsidiary. To find ambiguity here, as urged by the appellants, is to concoct it.
The majority also state: “In addition, there are disputes over, or a lack of clarity regarding, other important terms included in the interim agreement such as the adjustment formula, the terms of the voting trust, and shareholder and stock purchase agreements.” Id. at 1111. On this determination, like my brothers of the majority, I do not argue or explain; I assert.
Certainly, the appellants dispute this material. They fly-speck the record. They want to enjoy the fruits of a multi-million dollar cash infusion into their business without issuing a single share of stock, as provided in the agreement, and to prolong the inevitable result of this litigation by proceeding to trial or to blackjack a settlement. But I find no lack of clarity in the terms contained in the written instruments. Nor did the district court.
Any uncertainty in the law governing summary judgment prior to 1986 has been resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its now-famous trilogy, the Court explained that the plain language of Rule 56(c), Fed. R.Civ.P., mandates the entry of summary judgment, after ample time for discovery and upon motion, against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party’s case, and on which the party will bear the burden of proof at trial. In such a situation, there can be “no genuine issue of material fact” because the complete failure of proof concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party’s case necessarily renders all other facts immaterial. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-27, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2552-55, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-57, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2509-15, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 582-98, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 1353-62, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). I conclude that there was a complete failure of proof by the appellants in the summary judgment proceedings.
The Court also explained that a dispute about a material fact is “genuine” when the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could render a verdict for the nonmoving party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. at 248, 106 S.Ct. at 2510. Thus, no genuine issue of material fact can exist *1114unless there is sufficient evidence favoring the nonmoving party for a jury to return a verdict for that party. I conclude there was no genuine dispute here.
What we know as men and women we should not forget as judges. We know what happened here. Paul McCollister needed money to operate his ski resort. He was the one who approached John Deuss, Deepwater’s president and controlling shareholder, and persuaded him to invest in the ski resort. But the deal took on strange trappings for a business transaction. It was a stock purchase for a sum certain, but the number of shares to be transferred was subject to a future projection of the ski resort’s business. In this respect, the agreement took on the accouterments of a bid for commodities futures. Both sides gambled, but not for dollars and cents. They gambled on what percentage of the resort’s capital stock each would control at a later date.
McCollister later discovered two things: First, it was going to cost him a substantial federal tax assessment if he conveyed Jackson Hole Ski's excess real estate to another corporation, as mutually agreed upon in the agreement; and, second, after entering into an enforceable agreement that contained a mechanism that adjusted Deepwa-ter’s equity interest in Jackson Hole Ski after five fiscal years, he realized that Deepwater may be entitled to as much as 49 percent of the outstanding shares in Jackson Hole Ski at the end of five years.
Although McCollister got what he bargained for, it was not what he hoped for. But courts enforce legal bargains, not subjective hopes. Like the district court, I would enforce the agreement at the summary judgment stage because Jackson Hole Ski and McCollister have adduced no facts entitling them to a jury verdict at trial. See id.; see also Continental Ins. v. Page Eng’g Co., 783 P.2d 641, 650 (Wyo.1989) (“The rule is clear that the ... disposition of disputes relating to [an unambiguous] contract properly may be accomplished by a summary judgment.”).
The principals in this high finance drama were not Little League players. They were two professional Sumo wrestlers in a high stakes contest. Now that Deuss has thrown McCollister out of the ring, McCol-lister wants to climb back in by changing the rules. I would not let him do it.

. The expression is not mine. It is a paraphrase of a statement contained in W. Auden and L. Kronenberger, The Viking Book of Aphorisms viii (1981).