Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. v. Town of Amherst

4 A.D.3d 889, 773 N.Y.S.2d 768, 2004 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1412
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedFebruary 11, 2004
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 4 A.D.3d 889 (Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. v. Town of Amherst) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. v. Town of Amherst, 4 A.D.3d 889, 773 N.Y.S.2d 768, 2004 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1412 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinion

[890]*890Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court, Erie County (Joseph G. Makowski, J), entered July 9, 2002. The order denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint in this action seeking specific performance.

It is hereby ordered that the order so appealed from be and the same hereby is affirmed without costs.

Memorandum: Plaintiffs commenced this action seeking specific performance of an alleged agreement between plaintiff Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. (WNYLC) and defendant, Town of Amherst (Town). Plaintiffs allege that the agreement is comprised of two resolutions passed by the Town, together with an unsigned conservation easement instrument. The first resolution, passed on December 6, 1999, specifies that the Town would enter into a conservation easement with WNYLC covering certain property known as the Nature View Park in the Town and that the Town’s supervisor would sign all documents required for the easement. The second resolution, passed on December 20, 1999, authorizes payment of approximately $69,000 to WNYLC to monitor and manage the easement. On January 18, 2000, after the membership of the Town Board (Board) had changed, the Board passed a resolution rescinding the two December resolutions.

Supreme Court properly denied the Town’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint. The Town failed to meet its initial burden of establishing its entitlement to judgment as a matter of law on any of the grounds asserted in support of the motion (see generally Zuckerman v City of New York, 49 NY2d 557, 562 [1980]). With respect to the Town’s contention that the alleged agreement does not satisfy the statute of frauds and constitutes only an agreement to agree, we note that an agreement may consist of signed and unsigned writings as long as they refer to the same transaction, and parol evidence is admissible to show the connection between the writings and the defendant’s agreement to them (see Rupert v Rupert, 245 AD2d 1139, 1141 [1997], appeal dismissed 97 NY2d 661 [2001], rearg [891]*891denied 97 NY2d 726 [2002]). Here, the two December resolutions are signed, one by the Town Clerk and the other by the Deputy Town Clerk (see Village of Lake George v Town of Caldwell, 3 AD2d 550, 553-554 [1957], affd 5 NY2d 727 [1958]; see also 61 NY Jur 2d, Statute of Frauds § 220). The conservation easement instrument, although unsigned, expressly refers to the same transaction as that addressed in the two December resolutions and covers every material term of the parties’ agreement. Thus, it cannot be said as a matter of law that there was only an agreement to agree (cf. Baxter v County of Suffolk, 201 AD2d 603, 604 [1994]; Shepherd v Whispering Pines, 188 AD2d 786, 788-789 [1992]; Ramos v Lido Home Sales Corp., 148 AD2d 598 [1989]; see generally Urgo v Patel, 297 AD2d 376, 377 [2002]).

Contrary to the further contention of the Town, we conclude that it also failed to establish as a matter of law that there was no consideration for the easement. The conservation easement instrument sets forth legally sufficient consideration for the Town’s grant thereof in the form of conservation benefits and monitoring and reporting services to be provided by WNYLC (see Laham v Bahia Mehmet Bin Chambi, 299 AD2d 151, 152 [2002]; see generally Sagittarius Broadcasting Corp. v Evergreen Media Corp., 226 AD2d 261, 262-263 [1996]). In addition, the Town failed to establish as a matter of law that the easement is a gift in violation of NY Constitution, article VIII, § 1 (cf. Grand Realty Co. v City of White Plains, 125 AD2d 639, 639-640) [1986].

The Town has also failed to establish as a matter of law that the alleged agreement is unenforceable on the ground that the conservation easement is of perpetual duration. Generally, one municipal body is prohibited “from contractually binding its successors in areas relating to governance unless specifically authorized by statute or charter provisions to do so” (Matter of Karedes v Colella, 100 NY2d 45, 50 [2003]). Here, Environmental Conservation Law § 49-0305 (1) expressly provides that a conservation easement “shall be of perpetual duration unless otherwise provided in such instrument.” Finally, the Town has not established as a matter of law that the alleged agreement is unenforceable because no appropriation was made to fund it. There is an issue of fact in that respect based on evidence in the record that the money to fund the conservation easement was to come from an extra budgetary open space or green space fund.

All concur except Kehoe and Hayes, JJ., who dissent in part and vote to modify in accordance with the following memoran[892]*892dum. Kehoe and Hayes, JJ. (dissenting in part). We respectfully dissent in part. We would modify the order by granting the motion of defendant, Town of Amherst (Town), for summary judgment in part and dismissing the first cause of action alleging breach of contract and seeking specific performance. We disagree with the majority’s conclusion that there are triable issues of fact concerning whether the Town and plaintiff Western New York Land Conservancy, Inc. (WNYLC) entered into an agreement for the conveyance of an interest in real property and, if so, whether any such contract is evidenced by a memorandum signed by the Town, the party to be charged, and containing a sufficiently definite statement of the parties’ mutual obligations to satisfy the requirements of the applicable statute of frauds (see General Obligations Law § 5-703 [2]). The majority construes three documents together—the “Deed of Conservation Easement” and two resolutions of the Town Board—as arguably satisfying the requirements of the statute of frauds and objectively manifesting the parties’ mutual assent to be bound to particular obligations. The “Deed of Conservation Easement,” which is undated, was never executed by any responsible official of the Town, nor was it delivered to WNYLC, the proposed “Grantee” of the proposed conservation easement. The existence of that document in its incomplete, unsigned, and undelivered form obviously does not suffice to satisfy the statute of frauds; it merely occasions the inquiry into whether there is otherwise a signed writing satisfying the statute of frauds.

The majority nevertheless supposes that the Town Board’s two resolutions, signed respectively by the Town Clerk and Deputy Town Clerk, may satisfy the statute of frauds. A reading of the resolutions, however, makes it apparent that, in signing the resolutions, those Town officials were not purporting either to enter into or to evidence a contract on behalf of the Town with WNYLC, but instead were merely certifying that the written resolutions themselves conformed to what actually had transpired during the pertinent sessions of the Town Board. Plainly, neither of those officials acted as an agent of the Town authorized to execute the alleged realty contract in question. That much is apparent from the language of the first resolution itself, which authorizes the Town “Supervisor to sign all documents required for said easement.” In order for the majority to consider the resolutions themselves as memoranda sufficient to satisfy the statute of frauds, the majority must go beyond equating the Town Clerk and Deputy Town Clerk with the Town Supervisor (which of course one cannot do according to the language of the resolutions themselves or under familiar principles of municipal governance) and must equate the resolu[893]

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4 A.D.3d 889, 773 N.Y.S.2d 768, 2004 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1412, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/western-new-york-land-conservancy-inc-v-town-of-amherst-nyappdiv-2004.