City of Orlando v. H. L. Coble Const. Co.
| Decision Date | 29 June 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 71--900,71--900 |
| Citation | 282 So.2d 25 |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
| Parties | The CITY OF ORLANDO, Appellant, v. H. L. COBLE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, a North Carolina corporation, et al., Appellees. |
Robert Dyer, of Van Den Berg, Gay, Burke & Dyer, Orlando, for appellant.
Monroe E. McDonald, of Sanders, McEwan, Mims and McDonald, Orlando, for appellees.
H. L. Coble Construction Company built a municipal incinerator under contract with the City of Orlando. When the plant failed to operate satisfactorily, the City filed a suit against the construction company (and the surety on its bond) alleging that the incinerator did not meet the performance warranty in the contract. A jury trial resulted in a verdict and judgment for both defendants, and the City has appealed.
The gravamen of the City's complaint was that the contract contained a performance warranty and that such warranty had been breached. Coble contended that the contract contained a requirement that the contractor build the plant in strict accordance with the detailed plans and specifications, and having met this requirement, it (Coble) was not responsible if the finished plant did not meet the performance requirements.
The contract, which was prepared by the City's consulting engineers and which consisted of a series of integrated contract documents numbering some 250 pages exclusive of drawings, was introduced into evidence. It did, indeed, include under the division entitled 'Special Provisions' a requirement that the warranty for the incinerator would include, among other things, the following:
'12.1 That each item of equipment, and the incinerator as a whole, will perform the required function and meet the performance requirements specified herein when operating at any rate up to and including the specified capacity.'
Likewise, under the division of the contract documents designated as 'Technical Specifications' the equipment to be used and the details of construction were set forth with particularity. The evidence also established without serious dispute that Coble had constructed the plant in accordance with the detailed plans and specifications, and that the incinerator as constructed did not meet the above-quoted performance warranty.
At the conference on jury instructions, counsel for the City requested the court to construe the contract as containing a performance warranty on the part of Coble and to instruct the jury to that effect. The court concluded that the apparent conflict between the provision requiring the contractor to perform the work in accordance with the plans and specifications and the provision requiring that the incinerator meet the specified performance warranty created an ambiguity. It therefore declined to construe the contract as a matter of law and instead submitted the question of construction to the jury.
Appellant contends that the court erred in refusing to construe the contract and to instruct the jury as to its proper construction. We agree. The construction of a written contract is a matter of law to be determined by the court. City of Leesburg v. Hall, 1928, 96 Fla. 186, 117 So. 840; Paddock v. Bay Concrete Industries, Inc., Fla.App.1963, 154 So.2d 313; 7 Fla.Jur., Contracts, § 73; 17A C.J.S. Contracts § 617. The court should have construed the contract as to the expressed intention of the parties.
What construction should be placed on the contract? Despite the apparent conflict between the two provisions mentioned above, it is clear from the contract documents as a whole that the intention of the parties was to require the contractor to furnish the City an incinerator which met the performance requirements. The 'Special Provisions' contained a section providing as follows:
'2. Intent of Documents: The contract Documents shall have the following...
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