City Stores Company v. Ammerman

• Decision Date: 05 April 1967
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 98-66.
• Citation: 266 F. Supp. 766
• Parties: CITY STORES COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. H. Max AMMERMAN et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

266 F. Supp. 766

CITY STORES COMPANY, Plaintiff, v. H. Max AMMERMAN et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 98-66.

United States District Court District of Columbia.

April 5, 1967.

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Robert Martin, Alexander B. Hawes and Richard Shlakman, of Fowler, Leva, Hawes & Symington, and Richard K. Lyon, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

H. Max Ammerman, pro se, and Edgar H. Brenner and Melvin Spaeth, of Arnold & Porter, Washington, D. C., for defendants.

OPINION

GASCH, District Judge.

The plaintiff, City Stores Company, seeks specific performance of a contract wherein defendants allegedly promised to offer plaintiff a lease as a major tenant in defendants' shopping center in Tyson's Corner, Fairfax County, Virginia. By the terms of the contract, the defendants were to give plaintiff an opportunity to accept a lease on terms at least equal to those offered to other major department stores in the center. The court granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants from leasing the last available department store site to another department store. Now the court is called upon to decide whether there is a valid contract and, if so, whether it is sufficiently definite so that specific performance of it should be decreed.

Defendants desired to construct a large shopping center on a tract of land near Tyson's Corner, in Fairfax County, Virginia. In order to build the center, they had to persuade the Board of County Supervisors of Fairfax County to rezone the property for that use. By the time plaintiff came into the picture, defendants' prospects for securing the necessary zoning were not good: the Fairfax County Planning Commission and the Planning Commission Staff had voted against defendants' requested zoning. Defendants had to persuade the Board that these advisory groups were wrong in their recommendations. Moreover, defendants had an extremely strong competitor, the Rouse-Reynolds group, for another shopping center in the same general area. There was a zoning application for the Rouse-Reynolds center pending before the Board of Supervisors at the same time. Hearing on defendants' application was set for May 31, 1962.

During a period of time prior to May 31, Lansburgh's Department Store, which is owned by City Stores Company, the plaintiff herein, had been negotiating the terms of a lease of a store site in the Wheaton Plaza shopping center with defendants Lerner and Gudelsky. In the course of meetings with Mr. Lerner, or Messrs. Lerner and Gudelsky together, Lansburgh's president, Mr. Jagels, learned of the Tyson's Corner proposal. Mr. Lerner asked for a letter from Lansburgh's expressing a desire to participate in defendants' Tyson's Corner project, which could be used in the hearing before the Fairfax County Board of County Supervisors. Mr. Lerner had sought similar letters from other department stores in Washington, but found them unwilling to express a preference for defendants' Tyson's Corner site over the nearby proposed site of the Rouse-Reynolds group. Under normal circumstances, Lansburgh's also would have been unwilling to express a preference for one site over the other. It was eager to obtain suburban department store sites for expansion purposes. But, for a reason which is a matter of dispute between plaintiff and defendants, Mr. Jagels wrote a letter to Mr. Lerner and Mr. Gudelsky (Plaintiff's Exhibit E) in which he stated that it was Lansburgh's conclusion that the Tyson's Corner site was preferable to any other in the area and expressing Lansburgh's great interest in becoming a major tenant at a Lerner-Gudelsky shopping center if they were successful in their zoning application.

Defendants contend that plaintiff wrote this letter in order to secure defendants' help in obtaining necessary permission from other department store tenants in the Wheaton Plaza shopping center for plaintiff to become another major tenant there. However, I find that this contention is not supported by the evidence. The evidence shows that during the period in question, plaintiff and Lerner-Gudelsky had not themselves reached agreement on rental and other terms for plaintiff to become a tenant in the Wheaton Plaza center, and that they were engaged in negotiations. It was not until November of 1962, by defendant Lerner's own correspondence records, which are part of the evidence herein, that either plaintiff or defendants became aware that there would be an objection raised to plaintiff's tenancy by Montgomery Ward, one of the major tenants at Wheaton Plaza with right of approval of other lessees.

Plaintiff contends, on the other hand, that the Jagels letter to Lerner and Gudelsky was written at Lerner's request in exchange for a promise that plaintiff would be given an opportunity to become a major tenant at Tyson's Corner on terms at least equal to those of other major tenants at the center.

I find that on or about May 29, 1962, the Lerner-Gudelsky interests promised to give Lansburgh's an opportunity to become a major tenant at the Tyson's Corner center on terms at least equal to those granted other major department store tenants in exchange for assistance from Lansburgh's in securing the necessary zoning for the tract. I further find that on or about May 29, 1962, the defendants Lerner and Gudelsky signed and gave to Lansburgh's president Jagels the following letter concerning the defendants' promise, and that this letter, together with plaintiff's full performance of the requested services, is a sufficient writing to satisfy the Statute of Frauds, § 12-302 D.C.Code. The letter is Plaintiff's Exhibit B, and states:

Dear Mr. Jagels:

We very much appreciate the efforts which you have expended in endeavoring to assist Mr. Gudelsky and me in our application for zoning at Tyson's Corner for a Regional Shopping Center.

You have our assurance that in the event we are successful with our application, that we will give you the opportunity to become one of our contemplated center's major tenants with rental and terms at least equal to that of any other major department store in the center.

Sincerely yours /s/ Isadore M. Gudelsky /s/ Theodore N. Lerner

I also find that the services plaintiff performed for defendants, particularly the letter from Mr. Jagels which defendants used to support their case in the zoning hearing on May 31, constituted adequate consideration for a valid unilateral contract which was binding on defendants thereafter.

I

The plaintiff contends that this unilateral contract is an option for an opportunity to accept or reject a lease for a store at Tyson's Corner on terms at least equal to those granted to other major tenants. Defendants deny that the agreement is an option contract and contend that, even if it were, it would not be sufficiently definite to be specifically enforced by this court.

In determining the nature and consequences of this contract, it should be observed first that a typical option contract is a continuing offer for a fixed period of time (or a reasonable time if no time is specified) which is binding on the offeror because given for a valuable consideration.¹ As noted by Williston, the word "option" is a business and not a strictly legal term. 5 Williston on Contracts § 1441 (Rev.Ed.1937). An option contract is a unilateral contract as is the contract at issue. Generally, however, an option contract describes specifically the subject offered and all its material terms. The offeree knows at the time he receives the option exactly what has been offered and what he may accept or reject. It is obvious that the contract between Lerner-Gudelsky and Lansburgh's is not of this description, and further analysis is needed to decide whether or not it may be classified as an option, despite its superficial dissimilarity to the usual form.

In this case, it is clear that an option in typical form could not have been offered by Lerner-Gudelsky, because they had nothing but a contingency to offer at the time the contract was made. Any specific terms they might have included in their letter to Jagels would have been meaningless in view of the fact that they had neither received the necessary permission to construct their center, nor had they entered into leases with other major tenants which were to be the measure of the lease offered to Lansburgh's. Yet it does not follow from this that what they did promise to offer Lansburgh's was without substance. What we have here is a contract with certain conditions precedent to its operation.

The first condition precedent to the Lerner-Gudelsky obligation to Lansburgh's was the securing of necessary zoning for its Tyson's Corner tract, without which it could not construct a shopping center at all. The second condition precedent was its entering into leases with other major tenants for stores in the center, so the terms of those leases could provide the essential terms of a lease to be offered to plaintiff. Defendants did secure the zoning, and they did, in the latter half of 1965, enter into leases with Woodward & Lothrop and Hecht department stores. At the time it secured those leases, defendants were under an immediate contractual obligation to tender plaintiff a lease which in all its material terms would be at least as favorable to plaintiff as the two other leases were to their respective stores. That this would have been possible is entirely clear from the record: both the Hecht and Woodward & Lothrop leases, Plaintiff's Exhibit F, contain clauses to the effect that their terms will be at least equal to those offered to other lessees in the center. Thus, even though none of the stores in the center will be identical in design, it is apparent from defendants' own leases that complete equality of material terms governing occupancy, including amount of space and cost per square foot, and substantially equal terms on less material aspects of the lease, is within the customary...