Silverhawk, LLC v. Keybank Nat. Ass'n

268 P.3d 958
CourtCourt of Appeals of Washington
DecidedDecember 19, 2011
Docket66190-6-I
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 268 P.3d 958 (Silverhawk, LLC v. Keybank Nat. Ass'n) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Washington primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Silverhawk, LLC v. Keybank Nat. Ass'n, 268 P.3d 958 (Wash. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

268 P.3d 958 (2011)

SILVERHAWK, LLC, a Washington limited liability company, Appellant,
v.
KEYBANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, a banking institution, Respondent.

No. 66190-6-I.

Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 1.

October 31, 2011.
Publication Ordered December 19, 2011.

*959 Maygan H. Hurst, Attorney at Law, Federal Way, WA, Michael D. Bohannon, Attorney at Law, Poulsbo, WA, for Appellant.

Shannon L. McDougald, McDougald & Cohen PS, Seattle, WA, for Respondent.

BECKER, J.

¶ 1 Where a swap agreement provides for payments over a fixed period of years and does not provide for early termination, a party who obtains release from the agreement by payment of an early termination fee has made an accord and satisfaction. Here, appellant claims the swap agreement did provide for early termination by setting forth a specific method for calculating an early termination fee, but appellant failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact with respect to this claim when confronted with a motion for summary judgment. Accordingly, we affirm the order dismissing appellant's action for breach of contract.

¶ 2 Appellant Silverhawk LLC was formed as a limited liability company more than 14 years ago. The members included Victoria Bowman, Carl Jacobsen, Lisbet Jacobsen, and managing member Stephen C. Bowman. Maygan Hurst, formerly Maygan Bowman, was Silverhawk's in-house counsel.

¶ 3 On November 5, 1998, Silverhawk made two agreements with KeyBank. One of the agreements was an International Swap Dealers Association, Inc. (ISDA) Master Agreement. The parties declared in the "master agreement" that they intended to enter transactions with each other called "schedules" and "confirmations," to be governed by the master agreement. Section 6 of the master agreement contained certain provisions for terminating a swap agreement and determining what payments would be due in the event of an "early termination date." Under certain circumstances, KeyBank would be required to obtain "market quotations" from other lending institutions in order to calculate the early termination fee. The second agreement was a schedule, specifying that if an early termination date occurred, the bank would obtain market quotations to calculate the settlement amount due.

¶ 4 In July 2001, Silverhawk obtained a 10-year variable rate loan from KeyBank, with the bank taking a security interest in Silverhawk's real property located in Auburn, Washington. On the same day, Silverhawk and KeyBank signed a confirmation of a separate swap agreement.[1] The Auburn property served as collateral for the swap as well as for the loan. The confirmation was to be effective from August 1, 2001, to August 1, 2011. We will refer to the three agreements—the master agreement, the schedule, and the confirmation—as "the swap."

¶ 5 In 2008, Silverhawk contracted to sell the Auburn property to another party. Silverhawk notified KeyBank of the sale. It was understood that to obtain release of the collateral, Silverhawk would have to pay off the loan, terminate the swap, and pay some amount of money to KeyBank for terminating the swap early.

¶ 6 An email from a KeyBank representative to Silverhawk on December 5, 2008, stated that the estimate for the cost of terminating the swap was $106,283, an estimate that would have to be updated on the date of the loan payoff:

Maygan,
Please note the loan payoff is separate from the swap termination. The loan payoff is projected to 12/15 $992,809.01 The swap termination was quoted on 12/2, but will need to be updated on the payoff date.
$106,283 The total would be $1,099,092.01 Thank you, Kevin Brown[[2]]

¶ 7 The sale of the Auburn property was scheduled to close on December 30, 2008. On December 30, Silverhawk representatives Maygan Hurst, Stephen Bowman, and Victoria Bowman called KeyBank and were given an updated quote of $123,167 for the swap *960 termination. They agreed to the amount, the escrow agent transferred payment to KeyBank by wire, and the real estate transaction closed at 2:24 p.m.

¶ 8 Over the next couple of weeks, Silverhawk became concerned that KeyBank had not calculated the termination fee for the swap in accordance with the swap agreement. On January 14, 2008, Silverhawk asked KeyBank for the market quotations the bank had used in making the calculations. KeyBank replied that it had not obtained market quotations because that method of calculating the termination fee did not apply where Silverhawk and KeyBank had mutually agreed to terminate the swap:

Maygan,
Because the swap was mutually terminated, the Second Method/Market Quotation provision does not apply. It only applies to an early termination event (e.g., payment default by either Key and/or Silverhawk). Also, that provision is typically enforced at time of execution (or a practical time thereafter) and not retroactively.
Unless explicitly dictated at time of execution (usually by bankruptcy court or another enforcement authority), Key does not go to 4 other institutions for their replacement rates (imagine if every bank did this for every termination, the market would be flooded with these requests). You are more than welcome to reach out to our peer banks (e.g., Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or U.S. Bank) for unbiased reassurance on how the termination process works and how the value is calculated. I'd be very surprised if our process/cost did not fall into a reasonable variance with other banks.[[3]]

¶ 9 On July 7, 2010, Silverhawk filed the present lawsuit against KeyBank alleging that it was a breach of contract for the bank to collect a termination fee that had not been calculated using market quotations. Silverhawk estimated its damages as more than $20,000.

¶ 10 On October 8, 2010, KeyBank moved to dismiss under CR 12(b)(6). The bank put the swap documents before the court and summarized its position as follows:

The termination was made solely as a result of the oral and written agreement between Key and Plaintiff requiring payment of $123,167.00 to Key from Plaintiff to terminate the otherwise valid Swap. Rao Decl. at ¶ 24. Neither party had provided or received notice of an Early Termination Date under the ISDA Master Agreement that would trigger a default calculation of any amount due under the Swap. Id.[[4]]

¶ 11 A review of the swap documents shows that notice of an early termination date is discussed in section 6 of the master agreement. That section allowed KeyBank to designate and give notice of an early termination date if an additional termination event occurred:

(iii) Right to Terminate. If:—
. . .
(2) An ... Additional Termination Event occurs,
... the party which is not the Affected Party [KeyBank] in the case of ... an Additional Termination Event if there is only one Affected Party may, by not more than 20 days notice to the other party and provided that the relevant Termination Event is then continuing, designate a day not earlier than the day such notice is effective as an Early Termination Date in respect of all Affected Transactions.[[5]]

The market quotation method would be in effect only if an early termination date was designated.[6]

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268 P.3d 958, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/silverhawk-llc-v-keybank-nat-assn-washctapp-2011.