Court Opinion

ID: 9767792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:27:13.487386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:33.045477
License: Public Domain

MOREMEN, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority opinion is, we believe, an adventure beyond the field in which we have heretofore expresséd the power to reform a contract.
It has been a common thing for courts of equity to reform contracts in order to express the true intent of the parties, but we have done this only when proof was clear and convincing that by mutual mistake of the parties or by fraud on the part of one party and mistake on the' part of the other party the instrument of agreement did not express the true agreement between them.
Courts have also construed instruments in the form of deeds to be, in fact, mortgages, where the conduct of the parties clearly demonstrates that they intended it to be a mortgage. But these things have been done under the power of reformation, and only upon proper pleading and proof, *365Bud where a party sought to reform the instrument, and then enforce .it according to its terms, after reformation.
We have also in cases where a severable contract contained both valid and invalid provisions, cast out the evil clauses and then enforced the good provisions, if the action did not do violence to the contract’s mutuality. In these cases the illegal provisions were disregarded, ánd only the legal provisions enforced.
A converse state of fact is presented here. We were not requested to cast out the wicked and enforce the good. We were asked to enforce the illegal portion of the contract itself bymeans of injunctive power, and we have enforced it after we have whittled it down to conform to our notions of decency. All of this without pleading or proof, and without (it seems to us) a basis of sound legal practice. See Johnson v. McMillion, 178 Ky. 707, 199 S.W. 1070, L.R.A. 1918C, 244.
CAMMACK,. C.- J„ concurs in.this.dissent. . .