Adams v. Wacaster Oil Co., Inc.

98 S.W.3d 832, 81 Ark. App. 150, 50 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 774, 2003 Ark. App. LEXIS 169
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedMarch 5, 2003
DocketCA 02-199
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 98 S.W.3d 832 (Adams v. Wacaster Oil Co., Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Adams v. Wacaster Oil Co., Inc., 98 S.W.3d 832, 81 Ark. App. 150, 50 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 774, 2003 Ark. App. LEXIS 169 (Ark. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinions

Andre Layton Roaf, Judge.

Appellants, Herb Adams and Agri Air Services, appeal a Garland County Circuit Court award of summary judgment to the appellee, Wacaster Oil Company, Inc., on their claims for breach of contract, breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and implied warranty of merchantability. Appellants assert that the trial court erred in granting appellee’s motion for summary judgment. In our original unpublished opinion in this case, issued October 23, 2002, we dismissed the appeal based upon the lack of a final order. The appellee timely filed a petition for rehearing and contended that the order appealed from was final because it dismissed the appellants’ complaint with prejudice. We have granted the petition and reinstated the appeal. In this substituted opinion, we affirm the trial court’s decision.

Appellants engage in the business of providing crop-dusting services. Appellee is a business that sells various types of fuel. On May 1, 1996, appellants purchased 1,500 gallons of aviation fuel from appellee. On June 17, 1996, a plane owned by appellants crashed. A Federal Aviation Administration investigation revealed that the plane did not contain the proper fuel.

Appellants filed suit on March 22, 2000, asserting breach of contract, breach of express warranty, breach of the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and breach of the implied warranty of merchantability. Appellee answered, asserting lack of notice as one of its defenses. Appellee then filed a motion for summary judgment. In its motion, appellee asserted that appellants had accepted the fuel and failed to give reasonable notice of the breach pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-607 (3) (a) (Repl. 2001).

Following a hearing, the court granted appellee’s motion. In its order, the court characterized the action as a breach-of-warranty action. The court found that Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-607(a)(3) requires a buyer to give reasonable notice to the seller upon the discovery of any breach. The court also found that the giving of notice was a condition precedent to recovery and that appellants had failed to give appellee reasonable notice. While the order did not specifically address the appellants’ breach-of-contract claim, it recited that “the plaintiffs complaint is dismissed . . . with prejudice.” We have concluded that this is a final, appealable order, and we therefore address the merits of appellants’ appeal.

The appellants argue that the trial court erred in granting the appellee’s motion for summary judgment with respect to their claims for breach of contract and breach of warranty. Summary judgment should only be granted when it is clear that there are no disputed issues of material fact, and it is appropriate to sustain a grant of summary judgment if the evidence brought before the trial court by the moving party shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. O’Mara v. Dykema, 328 Ark. 310, 942 S.W.2d 854 (1997). With regard to the contract claim, they assert that there was a contract because it is undisputed that appellants purchased 1,500 gallons of aviation fuel from appellee as evidenced by the written purchase order, that the fuel was defective and caused the crash of appellants’ crop duster, and that the trial court ignored the breach-of-contract claim in the final order. Specifically, appellants contend that a breach-of-contract claim is not displaced by a breach-of-warranty claim pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 4-1-103 (Repl. 2001), which provides:

Unless displaced by the particular provisions of this subtitle, the principles of law and equity, including the law merchant and the law relative to capacity to contract, principal and agent, estoppel, fraud, misrepresentation, duress, coercion, mistake, bankruptcy, or other validating or invalidating cause shall supplement its provisions.

The trial court found that appellants were required to give notice of breach pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-607, which provides in pertinent part:

Where a tender has been accepted the buyer must within a reasonable time after he observed or should have observed any breach notify the seller of breach or be barred from any recovery.

Ark. Code. Ann. § 4-2-607(3)(a).

Although not relied upon by the trial court or appellee, the Uniform Commercial Code further provides, in Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-714 (Repl. 2001) “Buyer’s damages for breach in regard to accepted goods”:

(1) Where the buyer has accepted goods and given notification (§ 4-2-607(3)) he may recover as damages for any non-conformity of tender the loss resulting in the ordinary course of events from the seller’s breach as determined in any manner which is reasonable.
(2) The measure of damages for breach of warranty is the difference at the time and place of acceptance between the value of the goods accepted and the value they would have had if they had been as warranted, unless special circumstances show proximate damages of a different amount.
(3) In a proper case any incidental and consequential damages under the next section may also be recovered.

(Emphasis added.) Additionally, Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-715 (Repl. 2001) is referenced in the preceding section, and provides in pertinent part:

(2) Consequential damages resulting from the seller’s breach include:
(a) any loss resulting from general or particular requirements and needs of which the seller at the time of contracting had reason to know and which could not reasonably be prevented by cover or otherwise; and
(b) injury to person or property proximately resulting from any breach of warranty.

Finally, we note that the supreme court has stated in Microsize, Inc. v. Arkansas Microfilm, Inc., 29 Ark. App. 49, 780 S.W.2d 574 (1989), that an action involving the sale of defective machinery was controlled by the Uniform Commercial Code rather than common law and that the giving of jury instructions on a breach-of^contract theory was error. We conclude that the trial court did not err in ruling that Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-607 was applicable to the appellants’ claim.

With regard to the claim for breach of warranty, the appellants contend that no particular form of notice to the seller is required and that the notice need not be in writing. They further assert that because they did not discover that the aviation fuel was defective until their airplane crashed, Ark. Code Ann. § 4-2-607 is inapplicable to the facts of this case. Finally, appellants contend that whether sufficient notice had been given was a question of fact and should not have been resolved through summary judgment.

Appellants’ argument must fail for several reasons. In Williams v. Mozark, 318 Ark. 792, 888 S.W.2d 303 (1994), the appellant had bought a fire-extinguishing system from appellee.

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Bluebook (online)
98 S.W.3d 832, 81 Ark. App. 150, 50 U.C.C. Rep. Serv. 2d (West) 774, 2003 Ark. App. LEXIS 169, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/adams-v-wacaster-oil-co-inc-arkctapp-2003.