State Ex Rel. State Highway & Transportation Department v. Garley

806 P.2d 32, 111 N.M. 383
CourtNew Mexico Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 24, 1991
Docket18684
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 806 P.2d 32 (State Ex Rel. State Highway & Transportation Department v. Garley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Mexico Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Ex Rel. State Highway & Transportation Department v. Garley, 806 P.2d 32, 111 N.M. 383 (N.M. 1991).

Opinion

OPINION

MONTGOMERY, Justice.

This is an appeal from a summary judgment in favor of the lessor and against the lessee under a lease of a certain tract of land in Valencia County, New Mexico. The State, through the Highway Department, brought this action to condemn the leased tract, naming only the lessor as defendant. The lessee intervened and asserted an interest in the tract by virtue of his lease. The lessor resisted this assertion on the ground that a clause in the lease provided that in the event of condemnation the lease would terminate and all proceeds would go to the lessor. The lessee sought to avoid the effect of the clause on grounds of mutual mistake, misrepresentation, and unconscionability. The trial court concluded that there was an insufficient basis for avoiding the clause and entered summary judgment in favor of the lessor. We agree that the case presented to the trial court gave rise to no genuine issue of material fact and that on the facts as presented the lessor was entitled to summary judgment. We therefore affirm.

I. FACTS AND ISSUES

The lease was entered into on September 16, 1977, between the owner of the property as lessor, appellee Eloy Garley, and the lessee, appellant Jerry Olguin. It was a standard, printed, “long-form” lease, containing the following provision:

Further, Lessee hereby covenants and agrees with Lessor that in the event the said demised premises, or any part thereof, are taken, damaged consequentially or otherwise, or condemned by public authority, this Lease shall terminate, as to the part so taken, as of the date title shall vest in the said public authority, and the rental reserved shall be adjusted * * * * All damages and payments resulting from the said taking, damaging, or condemnation of the said demised premises shall accrue to and belong to Lessor, and Lessee shall have no right to any part thereof.

The property subject to the lease was a 3.7-acre tract, on which a bar and lounge was situated, located at the intersection of State Highways 47 and 49 (sometimes called “the Valencia Y”). Mr. Olguin, the lessee, later swore in his affidavit (submitted in opposition to the lessor’s motion for summary judgment): “At the time the lease was entered into and at the time of the renewal, both Mr. Garley [the lessor] and I understood that a reconstruction of the Valencia Y * * * was contemplated, and that the condemnation and destruction of the bar and lounge on the premises would result.” However, according to the affidavit, both the lessor and the lessee believed that the condemnation would be partial, rather than a complete taking of the entire tract, and that upon such partial condemnation the lessor would use the condemnation proceeds to reconstruct the bar and the lease would continue. Based upon this “mutual mistake,” the lessee sought to have the condemnation clause in the lease declared “void” and unenforceable so that he could share in the condemnation award. See NMSA 1978, § 42-2-15(D) (court in condemnation proceeding shall apportion amount of award among defendants according to their interests in condemned property); 27 AmJur. 2d Eminent Domain § 250 (1966) (absent other provision in lease, lessee’s entitlement to share in condemnation award depends on statutory provisions).

The renewal of the 1977 lease mentioned in the lessee’s affidavit took place in June 1980, when the parties amended the lease to provide for an additional renewal for five years. The term of the original lease had been set to expire on September 30, 1980, but the agreement had granted the lessee, in several typewritten paragraphs at the end of the otherwise printed form, the option to renew for an additional five years. The effect of the 1980 amendment was to exercise the lessee’s first five-year renewal option, expiring in 1985, and to grant an option to renew for an additional five years, expiring in 1990. The 1980 amendment was entirely typewritten. In July of 1985, the lessee exercised his second option to renew, extending the lease for an additional five years.

The lessee’s affidavit recited that within the last year he had learned to his surprise that the state intended to take all of the lessor’s property, leaving no portion upon which the bar could be rebuilt. The affidavit said: “Mr. Garley’s and my assumption and belief about what the Highway Department was going to condemn turned out to be mistaken.” The Highway Department did indeed condemn the entire tract in this action, and so, according to the lessee, his and the lessor’s intentions and expectations were frustrated.

In this the ensuing condemnation action, the lessee intervened and set up his claimed interest in the premises through an answer in intervention. He also crossclaimed against the lessor, requesting judgment for a portion of the Highway Department’s condemnation deposit, which had already been drawn down by the lessor. The lessor moved for summary judgment, claiming that there was no genuine issue of fact and that under the condemnation clause in the lease he was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The lessee responded with the affidavit mentioned above and by filing a motion to amend his answer and cross-claim to allege specifically that the lease was based on a mutual mistake and a misrepresentation and that the condemnation clause should therefore be declared unenforceable or reformed to give effect to the parties’ intentions. The proposed amended answer and crossclaim also asserted that the clause was unconscionable.

The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment. (It did not reach the lessee’s motion to amend his answer and crossclaim, obviously because in view of the ruling on the motion for summary judgment it believed that the amended pleading would be legally insufficient.) The order granting summary judgment did not assign reasons for the ruling, but in announcing it from the bench the court said: “It’s not in the agreement. What’s in the agreement is contrary to the position taken by the intervenor even if it had been a partial taking * * * * [A] Judge’s responsibility is not to write a new contract for the parties but to interpret the contract ****’’ The court recognized that “neither of the parties anticipated that there would be a complete condemnation of all of the land,” but concluded that the lease was sufficiently clear to require summary judgment in favor of the lessor.

On appeal, the lessee contends primarily that the condemnation clause in the lease should not be enforced because he and the lessor were mutually mistaken in their belief that the Highway Department’s condemnation of the lessor’s tract would be partial instead of total. Alternatively, he contends that the lease should be reformed to delete the condemnation clause due to the parties’ mutual mistake. As another alternative, the lessee asserts that the lessor’s statements to him about his intention to rebuild the bar on the land remaining after the partial condemnation were misrepresentations entitling him, the lessee, to avoidance or reformation of the clause. Finally, as his last alternative, the lessee argues that the clause should not be enforced because it is unconscionable and that the trial court erred in not allowing him to present evidence of the commercial setting surrounding the clause and the reasons why, in that setting, it operates in an unconscionable way.

II.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
806 P.2d 32, 111 N.M. 383, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-state-highway-transportation-department-v-garley-nm-1991.