The Statute of Frauds’ Main Purpose Doctrine

Wilson Floors Co. v. Sciota Park, Ltd., and Unit, Inc.

377 N.E.2d 514 (1978)

Sweeny, J.

In December of 1971, Wilson Floors Company (hereinafter “Wilson”) entered into a contract with Unit, Inc. (hereinafter “Unit”), a Texas corporation to furnish and install flooring materials for “The Cliffs” project, a development consisting of new apartments and an office building to be located in Columbus, Ohio. Unit…was the general manager for the project. The Pittsburgh National Bank (hereinafter the bank), as the construction lender for the project, held mortgages on The Cliffs property security for construction loans which the bank had made to Unit.

As the work progressed on the project Unit fell behind in making payments to Wilson for its completed work in the spring of 1973. At that time, the project was approximately two-thirds completed, the first mortgage money of seven million dollars having been fully dispersed by the bank to Unit. Appellant [Wilson] thereupon stopped work in May of 1973 and informed Unit that it would not continue until payments were forthcoming. On May 15, 1973, the bank conducted a meeting with the subcontractors in The Cliffs project, including Wilson.

At the meeting, the bank sought to determine whether it would be beneficial at that stage of the project to lend more money to Unit, foreclose on the mortgage and hire a new contractor to complete the work, or do nothing. Subcontractors were requested to furnish the bank an itemized account of what Unit owed them, and a cost estimate of future services necessary to complete their job contracts. Having reviewed the alternatives, the bank determined that it would be in its best interest to provide additional financing for the project. The bank reasoned that to foreclose on the mortgage and hire a new contractor at this stage of construction would result in higher costs.

There is conflicting testimony in regard to whether the bank made assurances to Wilson at this meeting that it would be paid for all work to be rendered on the project. However, after the May meeting, Wilson, along with the other subcontractors, did return to work.

Payments from Unit again were not forthcoming, resulting in a second work stoppage. The bank then arranged another meeting to be conducted on June 28, 1973.

At this second meeting, there is conflicting testimony concerning the import of the statements made by the bank representative to the subcontractors. The bank representative who spoke at the meeting testified at trial that he had merely advised the subcontractors that adequate funds would be available to complete the job. However, two representatives of Wilson, also in attendance at the meeting, testified that the bank representative had assured Wilson that if it returned to work, it would be paid.

After the meeting, Wilson returned to work and continued to submit its progress billings to Unit for payment. Upon completion of its portion of The Cliffs project, Wilson submitted its final invoice of $15,584.50 to Unit. This amount was adjusted downward to $15,443.06 upon agreement of Unit and Wilson. However, Wilson was not paid this amount.

As a result of nonpayment, Wilson filed suit…against Unit and the bank to recover the $15,443.06 [about $60,700 in 2010 dollars]. On September 26, 1975, Wilson and Unit stipulated that judgment for the sum of $15,365.84, plus interest, be entered against Unit. When Unit failed to satisfy the judgment, appellant proceeded with its action against the bank. [The trial court decided in favor of Wilson, but the intermediate appellate court reversed the trial court decision.]…[The Ohio statute of frauds provides]:

No action shall be brought whereby to charge the defendant, upon a special promise, to answer for the debt, default, or miscarriage of another person…unless the agreement…or some memorandum thereof, is in writing and signed by the party to be charged.…

In paragraph one of Crawford v. Edison [an 1887 Ohio case], however, this court stated:

When the leading object of the promisor is, not to answer for another, but to subserve some pecuniary or business purpose of his own, involving a benefit to himself…his promise is not within the statute of frauds, although it may be in form a promise to pay the debt of another and its performance may incidentally have the effect of extinguishing that liability.…

So long as the promisor undertakes to pay the subcontractor whatever his services are worth irrespective of what he may owe the general contractor and so long as the main purpose of the promisor is to further his own business or pecuniary interest, the promise is enforceable.…

The facts in the instant case reflect that the bank made its guarantee to Wilson to subserve its own business interest of reducing costs to complete the project. Clearly, the bank induced Wilson to remain on the job and rely on its credit for future payments. To apply the statute of frauds and hold that the bank had no contractual duty to Wilson despite its oral guarantees would not prevent the wrong which the statute’s enactment was to prevent, but would in reality effectuate a wrong.

Therefore, this court affirms the finding of the Court of Common Pleas that the verbal agreement made by the bank is enforceable by Wilson, and reverses the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The Statute of Frauds’ One-Year Rule

Iacono v. Lyons

16 S.W.3d 92 (Texas Ct. App. 2000)

O’Connor, J.

Mary Iacono, the plaintiff below and appellant here, appeals from a take-nothing summary judgment rendered in favor of Carolyn Lyons, the defendant below and appellee here. We reverse and remand.

The plaintiff [Iacono] and defendant [Lyons] had been friends for almost 35 years. In late 1996, the defendant invited the plaintiff to join her on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. There is no dispute that the defendant paid all the expenses for the trip, including providing money for gambling.

The plaintiff contended she was invited to Las Vegas by the defendant because the defendant thought the plaintiff was lucky. Sometime before the trip, the plaintiff had a dream about winning on a Las Vegas slot machine. The plaintiff’s dream convinced her to go to Las Vegas, and she accepted the defendant’s offer to split “50-50” any gambling winnings.

In February 1997, the plaintiff and defendant went to Las Vegas. They started playing the slot machines at Caesar’s Palace. The plaintiff contends that, after losing $47, the defendant wanted to leave to see a show. The plaintiff begged the defendant to stay, and the defendant agreed on the condition that she (the defendant) put the coins into the machines because doing so took the plaintiff too long. (The plaintiff, who suffers from advanced rheumatoid arthritis, was in a wheelchair.) The plaintiff agreed, and took the defendant to a dollar slot machine that looked like the machine in her dream. The machine did not pay on the first try. The plaintiff then said, “Just one more time,” and the defendant looked at the plaintiff and said, “This one’s for you, Puddin.”

The slot machine paid $1,908,064. The defendant refused to share the winnings with the plaintiff, and denied they had an agreement to split any winnings. The defendant told Caesar’s Palace she was the sole winner and to pay her all the winnings.

The plaintiff sued the defendant for breach of contract. The defendant moved for summary judgment on the grounds that any oral agreement was unenforceable under the statute of frauds or was voidable for lack of consideration. The trial court rendered summary judgment in favor of the defendant.…

[Regarding the “consideration” argument:] The defendant asserted the agreement, if any, was voidable because there was no consideration. The defendant contended the plaintiff’s only contribution was the plaintiff’s dream of success in Las Vegas and her “luck.” The plaintiff asserted the defendant bargained with her to go to Las Vegas in return for intangibles that the defendant thought the plaintiff offered (good luck and the realization of the dream). The plaintiff said she gave up her right to remain in Houston in return for the agreement to split any winnings. The plaintiff also asserted the agreement was an exchange of promises.

…The plaintiff alleged she promised to share one-half of her winnings with the defendant in exchange for the defendant’s promise to share one-half of her winnings with the plaintiff. These promises, if made, represent the respective benefits and detriments, or the bargained for exchange, necessary to satisfy the consideration requirement. See [Citation] (when no other consideration is shown, mutual obligations by the parties to the agreement will furnish sufficient consideration to constitute a binding contract).…[Regarding the Statute of Frauds argument:] The defendant asserted the agreement, if any, was unenforceable under the statute of frauds because it could not be performed within one year. There is no dispute that the winnings were to be paid over a period of 20 years.…

[The statute] does not apply if the contract, from its terms, could possibly be performed within a year—however improbable performance within one year may be. [Citations] [It bars] only oral contracts that cannot be completed within one year. [Citation] (If the agreement, either by its terms or by the nature of the required acts, cannot be performed within one year, it falls within the statute of frauds and must be in writing).

To determine the applicability of the statute of frauds with indefinite contracts, this Court may use any reasonably clear method of ascertaining the intended length of performance. [Citation] The method is used to determine the parties’ intentions at the time of contracting. The fact that the entire performance within one year is not required, or expected, will not bring an agreement within the statute. See [Citations].

Assuming without deciding that the parties agreed to share their gambling winnings, such an agreement possibly could have been performed within one year. For example, if the plaintiff and defendant had won $200, they probably would have received all the money in one pay-out and could have split the winnings immediately. Therefore, the defendant was not entitled to summary judgment based on her affirmative defense of the statute of frauds.

We reverse the trial court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings.

The Parol Evidence Rule: Postcontract Modification

Hampden Real Estate, Inc. v. Metropolitan Management Group, Inc.

142 Fed. Appx. 600 (Fed. Ct. App. Pa. 2005)

Cowen, J.

[The court has jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship.]

Hampden Real Estate sold Metropolitan Management a residential property pursuant to an Agreement of Sale (the “Sale Agreement”). The Sale Agreement provided that the property would be sold for $3.7 million, that Metropolitan would assume Hampden’s mortgage on the building, and that Hampden would receive a credit in the amount of $120,549.78—the amount being held in escrow pursuant to the mortgage (the “Escrow Account Credit”).

Between the execution of the Sale Agreement and the closing, the parties negotiated certain adjustments to the purchase price to compensate for required repairs. During these negotiations, the parties reviewed a draft and final Settlement Statement (the “Settlement Statement”), prepared by the closing agent, which did not list the Escrow Account Credit among the various debits and credits. A few weeks after the closing, Hampden demanded payment of the Escrow Account Credit.

Following Metropolitan’s refusal to pay the Escrow Account Credit, Hampden filed a complaint claiming breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and conversion. Metropolitan brought counterclaims for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraudulent or negligent misrepresentation. Hampden brought a partial motion for summary judgment as to the breach of contract claim, which was granted and its unjust enrichment and conversion claims were dismissed as moot.…

The District Court correctly determined that the threshold issue is the role of the Settlement Statement, “based on both the intent of the parties and the custom and usage of the document.” However, the Court refused to consider extrinsic or parol evidence to determine the intent of the parties, reasoning that the parol evidence rule precluded such consideration absent ambiguity in the written contract. We find that the District Court misapplied the rule. The parol evidence rule seeks to preserve the integrity of written agreements by precluding the introduction of contemporaneous or prior declarations to alter the meaning of written agreements. [Citation] The rule does not apply, however, where a party seeks to introduce evidence of subsequent oral modifications. See [Citation:] a “written agreement may be modified by a subsequent written or oral agreement and this modification may be shown by writings or by words or by conduct or by all three. In such a situation the parol evidence rule is inapplicable.” Here, the parol evidence rule does not preclude testimony regarding the parties’ intention to alter the final purchase price by executing a Settlement Statement, after the execution of the Sale Agreement, which omitted the Escrow Account Credit.

The cases cited by Hampden are not to the contrary as each involved the admissibility of prior negotiations to demonstrate misrepresentations made in the inducement of the contract. As example, the court in [Citation], held that “[i]f a party contends that a writing is not an accurate expression of the agreement between the parties, and that certain provisions were omitted therefrom, the parol evidence rule does not apply.” (Permitting the introduction of parol evidence to establish that the contract omitted provisions which appellees represented would be included in the writing).…

The District Court further held that the integration clause contained in the written contract supports the conclusion that the Settlement Statement, which mentioned neither the Escrow Account Credit nor that it was amending the Sale Agreement, is not a modification of the Sale Agreement. The Court explained that the outcome might be different if the Settlement Statement mentioned “the escrow credit but provided different details, but as the [Settlement Statement] in this case simply ignored the escrow credit, and both parties agree that there were no oral discussions regarding the escrow credit, the [Settlement Statement] cannot be said to modify the escrow credit provision in the Agreement of Sale.” We disagree.

It is well-settled law in Pennsylvania that a “written contract which is not for the sale of goods may be modified orally, even when the contract provides that modifications may only be made in writing.” [Citition] “The modification may be accomplished either by words or conduct,” [Citation] demonstrating that the parties intended to waive the requirement that amendments be made in writing. [Citation] An oral modification of a written contract must be proven by “clear, precise and convincing evidence.” [Citation] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Metropolitan, we find that the District Court erred in concluding that there was insufficient evidence in the record to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the parties intended to orally modify the Sale Agreement. Metropolitan introduced a Settlement Statement which omitted the Escrow Account Credit, while listing all other debits and credits and submitted an affidavit from its President who “reviewed the Draft Settlement Statement and understood that the Escrow Account Credit had been omitted as part of the ongoing negotiations between the parties concerning the amount of the credit to which Metropolitan was entitled” due to the poor condition of the property.

Accordingly, the District Court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Hampden. At a minimum, there was a triable issue of fact concerning whether the Settlement Statement was intended to modify the prior written Sale Agreement and serve as the final and binding manifestation of the purchase price. Specifically, whether the parties intended to exclude the Escrow Account Credit from the purchase price as part of the negotiations to address Hampden’s failure to maintain the property.

[Reversed and remanded.]