Foster v. Gridley

1966 OK 66, 413 P.2d 529
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedApril 5, 1966
DocketNo. 41227
StatusPublished

This text of 1966 OK 66 (Foster v. Gridley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Foster v. Gridley, 1966 OK 66, 413 P.2d 529 (Okla. 1966).

Opinion

BLACKBIRD, Justice.

This appeal involves an attempt by plaintiff in error, hereinafter referred to as “plaintiff”, to enforce an oral agreement, evidenced by written memoranda, he had with defendant in error, hereinafter referred to as “defendant”, for the two to effect the purchase of the Seven Up Bottling Company of Tulsa, Inc., and organize a new corporation to own and operate it.

Plaintiff and defendant entered into their agreement on February 4, 1963. After defendant and others thereafter purchased said Seven Up Bottling Company, on July 3, 1963, plaintiff commenced the present action against defendant, the same month, praying for specific performance of his agreement with defendant. In defendant’s answer, he alleged, among other things, that the agreement was not one that could be enforced by specific performance.

Evidence introduced at the trial before the court without a jury, in May, 1964, established, among other things, that all [531]*531shares of stock in the Seven Up Bottling Company of Tulsa, Inc., were owned by Joe D. Branham and Blanche M. Bran-ham, his wife; that, after plaintiff and defendant wrote a memorandum they termed a “GENERAL BASIS” of the agreement between them, for the purchase of the Branhams’ stock, to be assigned to a new corporation the two were to organize, they went to the office of the firm of attorneys, that represent defendant herein, and engaged one of the firm’s members, Mr. Jack B. Bailey, to draft a contract termed an “Agreement”, dated February 4, 1963, with Mr. and Mrs. Branham for such purchase of their stock. This proposed contract was rejected by Mr. Branham and never signed, Mr. Bran-ham saying that he had decided not to sell. A short time later, defendant procured Mr. “Andy” L. Springfield to contact Mr. Branham, who then changed his mind and again became interested in selling the company. After the resumption of negotiations for the sale, and after more than one attempt, during succeeding months, to “work out” a sale that would be satisfactory to Mr. Branham, most of the terms of the sale were agreed upon about June 18th or 19th, 1963, and the agreement was thereafter consummated in the purchase of the Seven Up Bottling Company of Tulsa, Inc., on July 3, 1963, by defendant, for and with, a new company then to be incorporated as “Seven Up Company of Northern Oklahoma, Inc.”, in which defendant and certain third parties were to own all of the stock.

At the close of the evidence, the court took the case under advisement and thereafter, on July 28, 1964, filed a written “DECISION” in which he found, among other things in substance, that, by the terms of the agreement plaintiff and defendant had with each other in early February, 1963, the total consideration for the purchase of the Seven Up Bottling Com--pany from the Branhams was to be $407,-613.73, to be derived from the following sources: (1) By plaintiff and defendant each paying $50,000.00, or a total of $100,-000.00, in cash, (2) By defendant lending the new company to be organized, an additional $100,000.00 at an interest rate of 4% annually, and (3) By paying the balance in installments on promissory notes to be executed and delivered to the Branhams by the new corporation; that defendant was to be president of the proposed corporation at an undetermined salary; that plaintiff was to be said corporation’s vice-president and general manager at a salary of $1250.00 per month; that when plaintiff and defendant caused a contract embodying those terms to be drafted and presented to Joe Branham, he “turned the deal down, refusing to enter into any contract where any former employee, or particularly” plaintiff, was involved; that thereupon the agreement between plaintiff and defendant terminated, and no contract was proved to have thereafter existed between them; that the contract under which the Tulsa Seven Up corporation was sold, after that date, was a different contract, with different parties, and a different consideration, amounting to $40,000.00 more than that of the contract of February 5, 1963.

In said “DECISION”, the trial court concluded that there was no contract between plaintiff and defendant after February 5, 1963, “that could be enforced by specific performance.” In accord therewith judgment was rendered for defendant, upon the specific finding that plaintiff had not sustained the allegations of his petition. After the overruling of his motion for a new trial, plaintiff perfected the present appeal.

In the opening remarks of his argument for reversal, plaintiff takes the position that the question of whether Branham’s rejection of the proposed contract he and defendant submitted to Branham on February 5, 1963, brought an end to plaintiff’s and defendant’s agreement, is one of fact, and, by way of attempting to show that the trial court erred in its judgment, plaintiff argues that the parties’ agreement between themselves survived said rejection,' [532]*532and was in full force and effect “until breached by defendant on June 18, 1963.”

Under “PROPOSITION I” of his answer and reply briefs, defendant points to testimony in a deposition taken from defendant, and to other testimony he gave at the trial, to the effect that plaintiff and defendant continued to see each other regularly and they talked about the prospects and status of negotiations with Branham for the purchase of the Seven Up Company, after Branham’s rejection of the proposed contract they submitted to him in February, 1963, and until Attorney Bailey advised defendant not to talk to plaintiff about it any more, and to various contacts and communications he had with defendant both before, and after, it became certain that the Branhams would sell their stock to a corporate set-up with which plaintiff had no connection. Plaintiff’s counsel concedes that these “admissions” are insufficient in, and of, themselves to show that the new negotiations with Bran-ham (after it was ascertained through Springfield that it might be possible to devise some arrangement for the purchase of the Seven Up Company from Branham and his wife) were pursued on the basis of the plaintiff’s and defendant’s original agreement. But they say that said admissions “when blended with ingredients supplied by the other evidence in the case, stirred with common sense, established beyond any question that the intent of both parties was to purchase” the company on that basis. We do not agree.

The evidence shows that when plaintiff and defendant began their contacts through working for Branham’s Seven Up Bottling Company, defendant was little more than 21 years of age; his guardianship, necessitated by a substantial inheritance from his deceased father, had only recently been terminated; he was a “pre-law and management” junior student at Tulsa University; and the airplane he flew was being rented to the Seven Up Company for chartered trips. Plaintiff, on the other hand, had had 10 or 11 years of experience in the Seven Up Company when the Bran-hams purchased it in 1962, and was the Company’s vice-president and general manager, at a salary of $1250.00 per month. Mr. Branham testified that he was “in charge” of the Company “a hundred percent * * * ”. These facts, together with Mr. Branham’s further testimony that plaintiff had looked after the construction of a country home for him and that he had handled all of Branham’s “affairs” since the Branhams purchased the Seven Up Company, indicates that plaintiff was a man of considerable business experience.

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Bluebook (online)
1966 OK 66, 413 P.2d 529, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/foster-v-gridley-okla-1966.