(DOWNLOAD) "Lucie v. Kleen-Leen Inc." by United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Lucie v. Kleen-Leen Inc.
- Author : United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- Release Date : January 29, 1974
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 60 KB
Description
Plaintiff appeals from a grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff contends that the district court erred in construing the August 20, 1962 contract in that the district judge failed to allow extrinsic evidence which would have assisted in ascertaining the intention of the contracting parties. The defendant makes the counter argument that the language of the contract is plain and unambiguous and that the intention of the parties must be discerned solely from the language of the instrument itself without resort to extrinsic evidence. The sole issue before us is the propriety of the district court's grant of summary judgment for the defendant. We are of the view that there exists genuine issues of material fact relative to the interpretation of the August 20, 1962 contract and as such this matter was not an appropriate one for summary judgment. We cannot accede to the defendant's assertion that no extrinsic evidence reflecting on the parties' intentions should be considered. It is well-established that the test of admissibility of extrinsic evidence to explain the meaning of a written instrument is not whether the instrument appears to be plain and unambiguous, but whether the offered evidence is relevant to prove a meaning to which the language of the instrument is reasonably susceptible. A rule that limits the determination of the meaning of a written contract to its four-corners, merely because the court deems it clear and unambiguous, is a rule that ignores the intentions of the parties or presumes a degree of verbal precision and crystallization presently unattainable by our language.
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