Court Opinion

ID: 9717081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:57:30.1959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:51.081400
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the majority except for its analysis of the effect of the plaintiffs having entered into a loan receipt agreement with one of the defendants. Admittedly language used by the court in American Transport Co. v. Cont. Ind. R.R. Co. (1970), 255 Ind. 319, 264 N.E.2d 64 supports the majority's position.
Yet we have learned much concerning loan receipt agreements since that case was decided. While the basic concept of such agreements may be the same, they exist in almost infinite variety as to the terms, conditions and amounts subject to repayment. Certainly, in the extreme an agreement could be constructed with the amount of repayment so small or the condition so far-fetched that the court might conclude it was in fact something else. That is not my concern.
The cases appear to genuinely adhere to the concept that the plaintiff is entitled to only one satisfaction. I do not disagree. But if that is so, why should monies received upon a covenant not-to-sue or a covenant not-to-execute be counted toward that satisfaction? According to the recitations of the parties the money is paid as a consideration for the promise or to avoid the expense and uncertainty of litigation, not as compensation for injury. Many would deem it silly to allow such a transparent device to alter the substance of what was being done and thereby evade the mandate of a principle we indorse in the law.
In point of fact much the same thing oceurs in the typical "genuine" loan receipt agreement. Under the agreement in the case at bar the plaintiffs received $200,000. The agreement then understandably excluded the workmen's compensation payments which plaintiff received or might receive from consideration. The plaintiffs were then obliged to repay 25% of the first $400,000 they recovered from the other defendants, whether by settlement or judgment. If they recovered more than $400,-*126000 they were liable on a dollar for dollar basis for the remaining 75%.
Of course, whatever actual amounts they were obligated to repay were not and should not be treated as "satisfaction." On the other hand it seems inescapable to me that to the extent there was no obligation to repay in fact, there was a partial satisfaction and the law should recognize it.
The court in American Transport Co. recognized the desirability of permitting loan receipt agreements. That desirability does not appear to me to be hindered by enforcing the rule that amounts received which under the terms of the agreement need not be repaid, constitute a partial satisfaction of a plaintiff's claim.
I would therefore also credit against the judgment the amount paid under the loan receipt agreement which Sanders had no obligation to repay.