Chester v. Weingarten
| Decision Date | 11 October 2013 |
| Docket Number | SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2012-313 |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
| Parties | Lonnie Chester, Administrator of the Estate of Philomena Weingarten v. Albert J. Weingarten a/k/a Albert J. Von Weingarten and Mary Weingarten a/k/a Mary Von Weingarten |
Note: Decisions of a three-justice panel are not to be considered as precedent before any tribunal.
Civil Division
DOCKET NO. 275-10-05 Oscv
Trial Judge: Robert R. Bent
In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:
Defendants appeal the superior court's decision to enforce the parties' settlement agreement and to dismiss the pending lawsuit upon defendants paying plaintiff the sum set forth in the agreement. We affirm.
Plaintiff is the grandson and administrator of the estate of Philomena Weingarten, who died in December 2001 at the age of ninety-eight. The parties have been embroiled in a decade-long dispute concerning plaintiff's efforts to obtain an accounting of up to $250,000 of the estate's assets allegedly controlled by defendants, one of the deceased's six children and his wife, during the last few years of her life. In September 2005, the probate court granted plaintiff's motion to compel defendant Albert Weingarten to turn over and disclose those assets. When defendant failed to do so, plaintiff filed a lawsuit the next month in superior court alleging fraud or nondisclosure. Eventually, the case went to mediation.
At a January 24, 2012 status conference, the parties acknowledged that they had settled the case on November 4, 2011. The settlement agreement, handwritten by the mediator and signed by defendants and the parties' attorneys, stated at the top "Case is Settled" and contained the following language: The parties reported at the January 24 status conference that after the agreement was signed they disagreed about the scope of the release. When defendants' attorney mentioned that in an exchange of emails the mediator had indicated that he concurred with defendants' position on the scope of the release, plaintiff's attorney objected that those communications were confidential and privileged. Defendants' attorney stated his clients' position on the status of the agreement as follows:
On November 4th they wanted this done and they signed an agreement thinking it was done. Everybody left pleased that it was done. Within a week it was clear that it was not done because there was a dramatically different interpretation and they finally said forget it, it's not done, we just need a trial date.
Reasoning that the parties had settled the case and that any dispute over the scope of the release would be resolved later if necessary, the court stated that in thirty days the case would be marked as dismissed with prejudice based on the settlement agreement unless the parties filed motions within that time period disputing that fact.
On February 21, 2012, plaintiff filed a motion to enforce the settlement agreement. The following day, defendants' attorney filed a motion to withdraw. On April 18, 2012, defendants' new attorney filed a motion to set aside the settlement agreement. One week later, plaintiff filed several motions in response, including a motion to seal and strike defendants' motion, arguing that the communications defendants sought to introduce in support of their motion were confidential and privileged under the Uniform Mediation Act, 12 V.S.A. §§ 5711-5723. One day later, on April 26, 2012, the superior court granted plaintiff's motion to seal and strike, concluding that the motion and accompanying documents contained confidential and privileged communications. The court stated that it would "seal the motion and accompanying documents, to prohibit them from being requested as a public record," but also ordered the court clerk to set a hearing on all concurrent motions, including the motion to set aside the settlement agreement.
On May 14, 2012, defendants filed a reply to plaintiff's motion to seal and strike defendants' motion to set aside the agreement. A hearing on pending motions was held on August 15, 2012. At the hearing, the parties debated the meaning of the disputed release provision and whether the emails proffered by defendants in support of their motion to set aside the agreement were privileged. Defendants argued that once a disagreement arose over the release language, "the contract was no longer enforceable." At that point, plaintiff conceded that defendants' interpretation of the scope of the release was correct. The superior court stated that it would put in writing the conceded limited scope of the release. The court further stated that it considered the matter settled but would accept any evidence that defendants wanted to submit to show otherwise. Defendants' attorney initially appeared to accept the court's decision but at the end of the hearing argued that the settlement agreement was invalid as the result of the dispute reflected in the post-mediation communications and that the disagreement evidenced in those communications was not reconciled within a reasonable period of time. The court indicated that it would deny defendants' motion to set aside the settlement agreement. Two days later, the court issued an entry order stating that, in light of plaintiff's concession that defendants' restrictive interpretation of the release language was correct, the settlement agreement is "otherwise enforceable."
Defendants appeal that order enforcing the settlement agreement, arguing that the superior court erred in concluding that the settlement agreement was enforceable, given that there was no meeting of the minds between the parties regarding an essential provision of the agreement—the scope of the release—at the time the parties signed the agreement.* While theirappeal was pending, defendants also asked this Court to vacate the superior court's order sealing their motion to set aside the settlement agreement, which allegedly contained privileged communications. We agreed to consider that motion along with the merits of the appeal.
Upon review of the record, we concur with the superior court that the parties entered into an enforceable settlement agreement. It is well-established that settlement agreements are governed by contract law. Rogers v. Rogers, 135 Vt. 111, 112 (1977); see Cheverie v. Geisser, 783 So. 2d 1115, 1118 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2001) (). Although the law favors settlement agreements, it is a basic tenet of contract law that, for a contract to be effective as a legal document, "there must be mutual manifestations of assent or a 'meeting of the minds' on all essential particulars" at the point of agreement. Evans v. Forte, 135 Vt. 306, 309 (1977); see Quenneville v. Buttolph, 2003 VT 82, ¶ 16, 175 Vt. 444 (...
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