Court Opinion

ID: 9671524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:38:23.753741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:10.482660
License: Public Domain

FINE, J.
(dissenting).
¶ 17. The majority recognizes that both parties — including, significantly, the buyers of the Raz property, Dave Flores and Greg Montoto — knew that:
• Flores and Montoto could not use the property they contracted to buy unless they had approval to do so by the State Fair Park Board; and
• The contract executed by Flores and Montoto did not condition consummation of the sale on approval by the State Fair Park Board by any date.
Additionally, the contract was drafted and typed by Montoto, with, as he testified, possible input from Flores. Yet, the majority, like the trial court, rewrites the contract to make the sale conditioned on approval of the State Fair Park Board on or before March 15, 1999. I respectfully dissent.
¶ 18. First, it is black-letter law that unambiguous contractual language must be enforced as it is written "even though the parties may have placed a different construction on it." Cernohorsky v. Northern *318Liquid Gas Co., 268 Wis. 586, 593, 68 N.W.2d 429, 433 (1955). Moreover, contracts are generally construed against those who drafted them, not in their favor. Dairyland Equip. Leasing, Inc. v. Bohen, 94 Wis. 2d 600, 609, 288 N.W.2d 852, 856 (1980). Nevertheless, the majority adds to the Montoto-Flores/Raz contract a provision that Montoto and Flores never sought to have included among its terms, and, presumably, a term for which they did not pay.
¶ 19. Second, although terms can be implied in a contract in order to "accomplish substantial justice" irrespective of the parties' "original intentions," Peterson v. Sinclair Ref. Co., 20 Wis. 2d 576, 581-582, 123 N.W.2d 479, 482-483 (1963) (contract to deliver fuel oil implies promise of safe delivery), implied terms should not be inserted by a court when that "does violence to the language of the agreement," Oremus v. Wynhoff, 20 Wis. 2d 635, 640, 123 N.W.2d 441, 444 (1963) (condition precedent to the sale of a small apartment building that three of the apartments be rented did not impose upon the seller a duty to rent the apartments). In my view, adding a term that neither party sought makes this court a post-hoc legal advisor.
¶ 20. I am not persuaded that "substantial justice" requires that we re-draft the contract to say what, in retrospect, Flores and Montoto may now wish it had said when they wrote and signed it. The Board has approved the sale, and that should end the matter. Flores and Montoto wanted the Raz property, and Jack and Margot Raz wanted to sell it to Flores and Montoto. There is currently no impediment to enforcing the parties' agreement. I would reverse.