Applewood Landscape & Nursery Co., Inc. v. Hollingsworth

• Decision Date: 02 May 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-1884,88-1884
• Citation: 884 F.2d 1502
• Parties: APPLEWOOD LANDSCAPE & NURSERY CO., INC., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Wayne B. HOLLINGSWORTH, et al., Defendants, Appellants. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1502

884 F.2d 1502

14 Fed.R.Serv.3d 975

APPLEWOOD LANDSCAPE & NURSERY CO., INC., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Wayne B. HOLLINGSWORTH, et al., Defendants, Appellants.

No. 88-1884.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard May 2, 1989.

Decided Sept. 13, 1989.

Pamela N. Joseph, Boston, Mass., for appellants.

Peter B. Bickerman, with whom Roger J. Katz and Lipman and Katz, P.A., Augusta, Me., were on brief, for appellee Applewood Landscape and Nursery Co., Inc.

Mark E. Susi, Gardiner, Me., for appellees Warren Const. Co. and Harold Warren.

Before BREYER and TORRUELLA, Circuit Judges, and RE, ^* Judge.

BREYER, Circuit Judge.

This appeal arises out of simple breach of contract actions. Appellant Wayne Hollingsworth, a lawyer, built an expensive house for himself and his family on the shore of a lake in Maine. He decided to act as his own general contractor, at least in respect to landscaping. Instead of using readily available printed form contracts, he made oral contracts with the appellees, the Warren Construction Co., and the Applewood Landscape and Nursery Co. He hired Warren initially to help build his driveway and his airplane landing pad; later, in the fall of 1984, he asked Warren to build various garden walls that would hold back banks of soil, using old Canadian railway ties that Hollingsworth had obtained. He hired Applewood to install plants, trees and a lawn, in June and July 1985. He agreed with each appellee to pay an hourly billing rate plus materials.

Warren and Applewood performed the work requested, but Hollingsworth refused to pay each of them about $15,000 of the amounts they had billed. Hollingsworth did not deny that the approximately $15,000, in each instance, represented hours worked or the cost of materials; but, in his view, the work that each company performed was defective. The result was a dispute, a dispute that an arbitrator who knows about gardens might have resolved fairly quickly, but a dispute that in the form of court litigation, led to suits, removals, countersuits, claims, counterclaims, and third party claims, until, eventually, all the matters were consolidated and the parties went to trial in the Maine federal district court. The district judge, sitting as a trier of fact, found that Hollingsworth had failed to live up to his contracts; he awarded Warren the $14,662.15 it had claimed and Applewood the $15,335.53 it had claimed; and he denied Mr. and Mrs. Hollingsworths' claims for damages (claimed to be $100,000) as a result of defective work. Hollingsworth now appeals.

First, Hollingsworth argues that the district court's statements of its findings of fact and conclusions of law are legally inadequate. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a) ("In all actions tried upon the facts without a jury ... the court shall find the facts specially and state separately its conclusions of law thereon ..."). It is well established, however, that "findings are sufficient if they permit a clear understanding of the basis for the decision," Tri-Tron International v. Velto, 525 F.2d 432, 435-36 (9th Cir.1975). Since "the purpose of [this clause in] Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a) is to assist the appellate court by affording it a clear understanding of the ground or basis of the decision below," Boston and Maine Corp. v. First National Bank of Boston, 618 F.2d 137, 143 (1st Cir.1980), the "judge need only make brief, definite, pertinent findings and conclusions upon the contested matters; there is no necessity for over-elaboration of detail or particularization of facts." Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a), advisory committee's note to 1946 Amendment. See also Kelley v. Everglades Drainage District, 319 U.S. 415, 422, 63 S.Ct. 1141, 1145, 87 L.Ed. 1485 (1943) (per curiam) (findings need only be "sufficient to indicate the factual basis for the ultimate conclusion"); Feazell v. Tropicana Products, Inc., 819 F.2d 1036, 1042 (11th Cir.1987) (Rule 52(a) "does not require a finding on every contention raised by the parties"); Morgan v. Kerrigan, 509 F.2d 580, 588 n. 14 (1st Cir.1974) (the court "does not have to make findings on every proposition put to it by the parties"), cert. denied, 421 U.S. 963, 95 S.Ct. 1950, 44 L.Ed.2d 449 (1975); 9 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil Sec. 2579 at 710-11 (1971 & Supp.1988) (The trial court should "include as much of the subsidiary facts as is necessary to disclose to the reviewing court the steps by which the trial court reached its ultimate conclusion on each factual issue.... [But the] court need only make brief, definite and pertinent findings and conclusions...."). As long as such "brief" and "pertinent" findings are made and "the record as a whole supports the district court's findings of fact," we can affirm its result. Morgan, 509 F.2d at 588 n. 14. Accord Unt v. Aerospace Corp., 765 F.2d 1440, 1444 (9th Cir.1985) (even where district court's findings were "not well done [because they] consist mainly of mere conclusions, preceded only by an unhelpful chronology of events [and] do not articulate specific factual bases for the trial court's boilerplate determination that [defendant's] actions were justified by 'legitimate business reasons,' " there was no Rule 52(a) defect because "despite the factual shortcomings, the basis for the court's decision is clear [and the] record gives substantial and unequivocal support for the ultimate conclusion"); Infusaid Corp. v. Intermedics Infusaid, Inc., 756 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir.1985) (suggesting in dicta that appellate court may rely on "the record before us" to satisfy Rule 52(a)); Grover Hill Grain Co. v. Baughman-Oster, Inc., 728 F.2d 784, 793 (6th Cir.1984) ("Findings are to be liberally construed in support of a judgment ... the failure to even make an express finding of a particular fact does not require reversal if a complete understanding of the issues may be had without separate findings.") (citing cases); Swanson v. Levy, 509 F.2d 859, 861 (9th Cir.1975) ("failure to make the necessary findings does not require remand if a complete understanding of the issues may be had ... from the record on appeal") (citation omitted). Rule 52(a) expressly permits findings of fact to be made orally as well as in writing. Having read both the transcript of the trial and the judge's oral opinion, we believe the findings here are more than adequate.

The basic question in the Warren case is why the garden walls (walls separating the driveway and the landing ramp from the raised garden terrain) began to buckle. Hollingsworth testified that Warren should have installed them at a slant or a "batter"; that is to say, he should have rested each succeeding railroad tie an inch or so back from the front of the tie beneath it, thereby producing a stronger wall better able to hold back the dirt behind it; and, he should have placed more "deadmen" in the walls ("deadmen" being ties placed at a ninety degree angle to the wall, so that, like nails, they hold the wall to the soil stacked up directly in back of it). Warren testified, however, that "Mr. Hollingsworth wanted the wall straight upon and down. He didn't want it tipped." And, Warren added that Mr. Hollingsworth (to use the words of counsel's questions) "told" him, "instructed" him, "not to build any walls with batter [i.e. with a receding slant]". In addition, Bryan Walker, who was hired by Hollingsworth to draw up a basic landscaping plan, testified that Hollingsworth "wanted to see the wall built vertically with a straight face, because he much preferred the appearance of it" and he "was adamant in his insistence upon building that wall vertically" despite the fact that Walker "described to him the problems that he would undoubtedly run into if he did that." Warren, and others, also denied that the number of deadmen was insufficient.

The district court simply found that Warren had "built" the walls "in accord with the instructions that he had received from the owner," which is what he had contracted to do. In context, this written finding adequately informs the reader that the court believed Warren that Hollingsworth had asked to have the walls installed vertically and that the number of "deadmen" was not seriously inadequate. We note that the court also said that "some of the walls are defective at this point in time and require correction." That is, some of the vertical walls were buckling to some extent. But that statement is perfectly consistent with the court's findings, for Hollingsworth instructed Warren to build the walls in a way--vertically, not slanted--that Hollingsworth's own landscape planner had told him would risk problems later.

The question in the Applewood case was why so many of the trees and shrubs that Applewood bought were of poor quality and why the lawn that he laid, in large part, had to be replaced later by another company. Hollingsworth said that Applewood's work was simply shoddy. Applewood's owner and manager, David Leyland, however, said that Hollingsworth himself was the problem, for Hollingsworth, in early June, began to insist that Applewood complete its work by July 5, an impossible schedule, despite Hollingsworth's knowledge of the risks such a schedule would create for product quality. Leyland, and his co-owner, Ernest Glabau, said that they told Hollingsworth that it would be difficult to find decent quality shrubs and trees so late in the spring (and they offered to replace any poor ones); they also said that the quality of the sod (which Hollingsworth bought separately) was partly to blame for the lawn, as was a last minute severe rain storm, and an inability, given the time schedule, to complete all ground grading before beginning to install the sod.

The district court found that "Applewood was not aware of the need to conclude [its landscaping] ... program by the 5th of July or the 4th of July until some time in mid-June; that then at that time a serious effort was made to accomplish what was desired, or indeed what...