Category: Contract Law

Pontiac GTO Buyer Gets Only Paltry Damage Award Where He Can’t Prove Lost Profits Against Repair Shop – IL Court

Spagnoli v. Collision Centers of America, Inc., 2017 IL App (2d) 160606-U portrays a plaintiff’s Pyrrhic victory in a valuation dispute involving a 1966 Pontiac GTO.  

The plaintiff car enthusiast brought a flurry of tort claims against the repair shop defendant when it allegedly lost the car’s guts after plaintiff bought it on-line.

The trial court directed a verdict for the defendant on the bulk of plaintiff’s claims and awarded the plaintiff only $10,000 on its breach of contract claim – a mere fraction of what the plaintiff sought.

The Court first rejected plaintiff’s lost profits claim based on the amounts he expected to earn through the sale of car once it was repaired.

A plaintiff in a breach of contract action can recover lost profits where (1) it proves the loss with a reasonable degree of certainty; (2) the defendant’s wrongful act resulted in the loss, and (3) the profits were reasonably within the contemplation of the defendant at the time the contract was entered into.

Because lost profits are naturally prospective, they will always be uncertain to some extent and impossible to gauge with mathematical precision.  Still, a plaintiff’s damages evidence must afford a reasonable basis for the computation of damages and the defendant’s breach must be traceable to specific damages sustained by the plaintiff.  Where lost profits result from several causes, the plaintiff must show the defendant’s breach caused a specific (measurable) portion of the lost profits. [¶¶ 17-20]

Agreeing with the trial court, the appeals Court found the plaintiff failed to present sufficient proof of lost profits.  The court noted that the litigants’ competing experts both valued the GTO at $80,000 to $115,000 if fully restored to mint condition.  However, this required the VIN numbers on the vehicle motor and firewall to match and the engine to be intact.  Since the car in question lacked matching VIN numbers and its engine missing, the car could never be restored to a six-figures value range.

The Court also affirmed the directed verdict for defendant on plaintiff’s consumer fraud claim.  To make out  valid Consumer Fraud Act (CFA) claim under the Consumer Fraud Act a plaintiff must prove: (1) a deceptive act or unfair practice occurred, (2) the defendant intended for the plaintiff to rely on the deception, (3) the deception occurred in the course of conduct involving trade or commerce, (4) the plaintiff sustained actual damages, and (5) the damages were proximately cause by the defendant’s deceptive act or unfair conduct. A CFA violation can be based on an innocent or negligent misrepresentation.

Since the plaintiff presented no evidence that the repair shop made a misrepresentation or that defendant intended that plaintiff rely on any misrepresentation, plaintiff did not offer a viable CFA claim.

Bullet-points:

  • A plaintiff in a breach of contract case is the burdened party: it must show that it is more likely than not that the parties entered into an enforceable contract – one that contains an offer, acceptance and consideration – that plaintiff substantially performed its obligations, that defendant breached and that plaintiff suffered money damages flowing from the defendant’s breach.
  • In the context of lost profits damages, this case amply illustrates the evidentiary hurdles faced by a plaintiff.  Not only must the plaintiff prove that the lost profits were within the reasonable contemplation of the parties, he must also establish which profits he lost specifically attributable to the defendant’s conduct.
  • In consumer fraud litigation, the plaintiff typically must prove a defendant’s factual misstatement.  Without evidence of a defendant’s misrepresentation, the plaintiff likely won’t be able to meet its burden of proof on the CFA’s deceptive act or unfair practice element.

‘Lifetime’ Verbal Agreement To Share in Real Estate Profits Barred by Statute of Frauds – IL 1st Dist.

I previously summarized an Illinois case illustrating the Statute of Frauds’ (SOF) “one-year rule” which posits that a contract that can’t possibly be performed within one year from formation must be in writing.

Church Yard Commons Limited Partnership v. Podmajersky, 2017 IL App (1st) 161152, stands as a recent example of a court applying the one-year rule with harsh results in an intrafamily dispute over a Chicago real estate business.

The plaintiff (a family member of the original business owners) sued the defendant (the owners’ successor and son) for breach of fiduciary duties in connection with the operation of family-owned real estate in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.  The defendant filed counterclaims to enforce a 2003 oral agreement to manage his parents’ realty portfolio in exchange for a partnership interest in the various entities that owned the real estate.   The trial court dismissed the counterclaim on the basis that the oral agreement equated to a “lifetime employment contract” and violated the SOF’s one-year rule.  Defendant appealed.

Result: Counterclaim’s dismissal affirmed.

Reasons:

The SOF’s purpose is to serve as an evidentiary safeguard: in theory, the Statute protects defendants and courts from proof problems associated with oral contracts since “with the passage of time evidence becomes stale and memories fade.”  (¶ 26; McInerney v. Charter Golf, Inc., 176 Ill.2d 482, 489 (1997).

An SOF defense is a basis for dismissal under Code Section 2-619(a)(7).

Section 1 of the SOF, 740 ILCS 80/1, provides: “No action shall be brought…upon any agreement that is not to be performed within the space of one year from the making thereof” unless the agreement is in writing.

Under this one-year rule, if an oral agreement can potentially be performed within the space of one year (from creation), regardless of whether the parties’ expected it to be performed within a year, it does not have be in writing.  As a result, contracts of uncertain duration normally don’t have to comply with the one-year rule – since they can conceivably be performed within a year.

What About Lifetime Employment Contracts?

Lifetime employment agreements, however, are the exception to this rule governing contracts of unclear duration.  Illinois courts view lifetime contracts as pacts that contemplate a permanent relationship.  And even though a party to a lifetime agreement could die within a year, the courts deem a lifetime agreement as equivalent to one that is not to be performed within a space of a year.  As a result, a lifetime employment contract must be in writing to be enforceable.

Here, the 2003 oral agreement involved the counterplaintiff’s promise to dedicate his life to furthering the family’s real estate business.  It was akin to a lifetime employment agreement.  Since the 2003 oral agreement was never reduced to writing, it was unenforceable by the counterclaim under the SOF one-year rule. (¶¶ 30-31)

What About the Partial Performance Exception?

The Court also rejected counter-plaintiff’s partial performance argument.  In some cases, a court will refuse to apply the SOF where a plaintiff has partially or fully performed under an oral contract and it would be unfair to deny him/her recovery.  Partial performance will only save the plaintiff where the court can’t restore the parties to the status quo or compensate the plaintiff for the work he/she did perform.

Here, the Counterplaintiff was fully compensated for the property management services he performed – it received management fees of nearly 20% of collected revenue.

Afterwords:

This case validates Illinois case precedent that holds lifetime employment contracts must be in writing to be enforceable under the SOF’s one-year rule.  It also makes clear that a party’s partial performance won’t take an oral contract outside the scope of the SOF where the party has been (or can be) compensated for the work he/she performed.  The partial performance exception will only defeat the SOF where the performing party can’t be compensated for the value of his/her services.

 

 

 

Pay-When-Paid Clause in Subcontract Not Condition Precedent to Sub’s Right to Payment – IL Court

Pay-if-paid and pay-when-paid clauses permeate large construction projects

In theory, the clauses protect a contractor from downstream liability where its upstream or hiring party (usually the owner) fails to pay.

Beal Bank Nevada v. Northshore Center THC, LLC, 2016 IL App (1st) 151697 examines the fine-line distinction between PIP and PWP contract terms. a lender sued to foreclose

The plaintiff lender sued to foreclose commercial property and named the general contractor (GC) and subcontractor (Sub) as defendants.  The Sub countersued to foreclose its nearly $800K lien and added a breach of contract claims against the GC.

In its affirmative defense to the Sub’s claim, the GC argued that payment from the owner to the GC was a condition precedent to the GC’s obligation to pay the Sub.  The trial court agreed with the GC and entered summary judgment for the GC.  The Sub appealed.

Result: Reversed.

Reasons:

The Subcontract provided the GC would pay the Sub upon certain events and arguably (it wasn’t clear) required the owner’s payment to the GC as a precondition to the GC paying the Sub.  The GC seized on this owner-to-GC payment language as grist for its condition precedent argument: that if the owner didn’t pay the GC, it (the GC) didn’t have to pay the Sub.

Under the law, a condition precedent is an event that must occur or an act that must be performed by one party to an existing contract before the other party is obligated to perform.  Where a  condition precedent is not satisfied, the parties’ contractual obligations cease.

But conditions precedent are not favored.  Courts will not construe contract language that’s arguably a condition precedent where to do so would result in a forfeiture (a complete denial of compensation to the performing party). (¶ 23)

The appeals court rejected the GC’s condition precedent argument and found the Subcontract had a PWP provision.  For support, the court looked to the contractual text and noted it attached two separate payment obligations to the GC – one was to pay the Sub upon “full, faithful and complete performance,”; the other, to make payment in accordance with Article 5 of the Subcontract which gave the GC a specific amount of time to pay the Sub after the GC received payment from the owner.

The Court reconciled these sections as addressing the amounts and timing of the GC’s payments; not whether the GC had to pay the Sub in the first place. (¶¶ 19-20)

Further support for the Court’s holding that there was no condition precedent to the GC’s obligation to pay the Sub lay in another Subcontract section that spoke to “amounts and times of payments.”  The presence of this language signaled that it wasn’t a question of if the GC had to pay the Sub but, instead, when it paid.

In the end, the Court applied the policy against declaring forfeitures: “[w]ithout clear language indicating the parties’ intent that the Subcontractor would assume the risk of non-payment by the owner, we will not construe the challenged language…..as a condition precedent.” (¶ 23)

Since the Subcontract was devoid of “plain and unambiguous” language sufficient to overcome the presumption against a wholesale denial of compensation, the Court found that the Subcontract contained pay-when-paid language and that there was no condition precedent to the Sub’s entitlement to payment from the GC.

Take-aways

Beal Bank provides a solid synopsis of pay-if-paid and pay-when-paid clauses.  PIPs address whether a general contractor has to pay a subcontractor at all while PWPs speak to the timing of a general’s payment to a sub.

The case also re-emphasizes that Section 21(e) of the Illinois Mechanics Lien Act provides that the presence of a PIP or PWP contract term is no defense to a mechanics lien claim (as opposed to garden-variety breach of contract claim).