Hughes v. Misar

• Decision Date: 20 August 2003
• Citation: 189 Or. App. 258,76 P.3d 111
• Parties: Gene HUGHES and Penny Hughes, Respondents-Cross-Appellants, and Edward Hutsell and Barbara Hutsell, Respondents-Cross-Respondents, v. Kurt MISAR and Colleen Misar, Appellants-Cross-Respondents.
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals

76 P.3d 111

189 Or. App. 258

Gene HUGHES and Penny Hughes, Respondents-Cross-Appellants, and Edward Hutsell and Barbara Hutsell, Respondents-Cross-Respondents, v. Kurt MISAR and Colleen Misar, Appellants-Cross-Respondents.

98C019850; A114644.

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and Submitted April 9, 2003.

Decided August 20, 2003.

Margaret H. Leek Leiberan, Portland, argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellants-cross-respondents.

Christopher H. Kent, Portland, argued the cause for respondents-cross-appellants. With him on the briefs was Hafez Daraee.

No appearance for respondents-cross-respondents.

Before EDMONDS, Presiding Judge, and DEITS, Chief Judge, and SCHUMAN, Judge.

EDMONDS, P.J.

Defendants appeal a judgment in which the trial court found that plaintiffs and defendants had settled their original disputes in this case, determined the terms of the settlement, and ordered the parties to take certain steps to carry it out. Defendants argue that they only discussed a proposed settlement that would not become binding until they signed the final settlement documents, which they never did. Plaintiffs Hugheses cross-appeal for attorney fees under the terms of the settlement as the court found it to exist.¹ We affirm on the appeal and reverse and remand on the cross-appeal.

We state the facts as we find them on de novo review.² Plaintiffs Gene and Penny Hughes and Edward and Barbara Hutsell and defendants Kurt and Colleen Misar³ all own homes in the Glen Harbor Heights subdivision in northwest Portland. All parties reach their homes by a private gravel road that connects with an unimproved city street a short distance from Germantown Road. The Hugheses moved into their home before 1980, which was also before the other houses were built. The Misars were the last to move to the area, in 1996, when they purchased an existing house.

In 1983, either the Hugheses or the developer of the subdivision owned all of the land to which the road provides access. That year, the owners entered into a Roadway Easement and Roadway and Gate Maintenance Agreement that created an easement over the road and required the owners of houses on the benefitted lots to pay the costs of maintaining it. The other parties' houses were built in the immediately following years; several lots remain unbuilt. Before 1996, Gene Hughes took the primary responsibility for maintaining the road under the agreement. He owned the necessary equipment, did most of the physical work, and prorated his costs among the three homeowners who used the road. After defendants moved into their home, a number of disputes arose between them and Gene concerning the maintenance of the road. Those disputes led plaintiffs to file this action in 1998, seeking damages for defendants' failure to participate in maintaining the road. In their answer, defendants asserted a number of counterclaims, and plaintiffs then amended their complaint to add additional claims.

The parties scheduled the deposition of Penny Hughes for November 15, 1999. Before beginning the deposition, they decided to attempt to settle their disputes. After considerable discussion, they reached an agreement on what they believed to be the essential terms of the settlement; as a result, the deposition did not occur. The Hugheses' attorney wrote out the agreed terms on two sheets of ruled paper, headed "Terms"; the Hugheses, their attorney, Kurt Misar, and the Misars' attorney all signed the document. The Hutsells were not present, but they received a copy of the document by facsimile and orally agreed to the terms. Colleen Misar had to leave before the discussions were complete, and Kurt signed the document on her behalf, although without her express authority. Kurt later testified that he did not intend to agree to the terms listed on the sheets as a settlement that would be binding before the preparation and execution of the appropriate documents, but he did not communicate those reservations at the time. The other parties believed the terms to be binding immediately.

The settlement terms provided that the roadway would be paved, with each couple paying a third of the cost. The terms sheet stated the cost of paving as $20,000, which was Gene Hughes's estimate based on bids that he had received for similar projects. It did not mention permits or environmental review. Defendants agreed to pay the Hugheses $5,400, and the settlement resolved a number of minor disputes, primarily between the Hugheses and the Misars. The most important additional part of the agreement was that the parties would create a homeowners' association and enter into a new road maintenance agreement. The officers of the association would rotate annually; two-thirds of the members could authorize expenditures up to $4,500, but for expenditures in excess of that amount the dissenters could request an arbitration procedure. New users of the road would participate on a pro rata basis. The settlement included additional details concerning the operation of the association, and the parties informally agreed that Kurt Misar would act as the first chairman. Finally, the settlement provided for mutual releases of all claims.⁴

Shortly after the parties executed the terms sheet, Gene Hughes obtained a bid for paving the road at a cost of $21,000. The Hugheses then left for Florida while their attorneys began work on preparing the documentation to implement the settlement. That documentation consisted of a settlement agreement and a mutual release, a restated roadway maintenance agreement, and the articles of incorporation and bylaws of the homeowners' association. Defendants did not accept the original proposals, and the parties exchanged several drafts without reaching a full agreement regarding them. The Hugheses returned to Portland in January because of what they believed was the failure to implement the existing settlement. In March 2000, all parties and their lawyers met on the road itself to discuss the situation. At that meeting, they endeavored to resolve all outstanding issues and reached what Penny Hughes described as the "final, final" agreement. Thereafter, the Hugheses' attorney sent a revised version of the settlement documents to defendants' attorney, who responded on March 29, 2000, with a request for several modifications.

Gene had become increasingly frustrated over the delays and cost involved in documenting the settlement; he considered the documentation to be simply lawyer-imposed technicalities that were irrelevant to the essential terms of the November 15 agreement. Although he testified that he believed that defendants' proposed changes were insignificant (a point with which Kurt generally agreed), defendants' request for further modifications led him to ask his attorney to return to the November 15 terms and, generally, to simplify everything. Gene believed that the road should have been paved soon after he got the bid, and he was particularly upset about the delay in paving it. His attorney made a number of changes to the documents, particularly concerning the conditions for paving the roadway, and plaintiffs signed the documents as revised. The attorney sent the revised documents to defendants' lawyer on April 12, 2000. Defendants insisted that the changes gutted the settlement, particularly with regard to paving the road without firm requirements for permits that they thought were necessary, and they refused to sign the documents. Plaintiffs then amended their complaint in this action to add a claim to enforce the settlement, and that claim was tried to the trial court.

The trial court found that the parties had settled the case and that the version of the documents that the Hugheses' attorney sent defendants' attorney after the March meeting, as modified by the changes that defendants requested on March 29, expressed the terms of the settlement. The court therefore entered a judgment determining that those documents constituted the parties' settlement. The judgment required that the road be paved in accordance with all applicable legal requirements and by a properly licensed and bonded contractor. It also awarded the Hugheses judgment against defendants for $5,400, and it dismissed all other claims and counterclaims with prejudice. The court subsequently denied the Hugheses' motion, which they based on a provision of the written settlement agreement that the attorneys had drafted, and the trial court had adopted, for an award of attorney fees, rather, if determined that "that aspect was not sufficiently agreed upon in the settlement documents for the Court to enforce attorney fees."

In their first assignment of error, defendants argue that the trial court erred in holding that the documents that it identified constituted a binding settlement agreement. They argue that there is no evidence that all the parties expressly consented to all of the provisions of the settlement that the court identified. In particular, they assert that there is no evidence that defendants agreed to all of the terms of the documents that the Hugheses' lawyer sent after the March meeting and that there is no evidence that plaintiffs agreed at the time to all of the modifications of those documents that defendants proposed in response.⁵

The unstated general premise of defendants' argument on appeal is that the parties did not intend their settlement to be legally binding until they expressed it in more formal and complete written documents to which all parties agreed and that all parties signed. We do not find that to be the parties' intention. Rather, we find that the parties intended the November 15 settlement to be binding immediately and that they intended the subsequent documentation to reflect and implement their agreement. When parties agree on the essential terms of a contract and there is nothing left for future negotiations, the fact that they also intended there to be a future writing that expresses their...