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236 So. 2d 86

Charbonnet v. Ochsner

Louisiana Court of Appeal

Decided May 4, 1970

Louisiana Court of Appeal · decided 1970-05-04

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““A transaction or compromise is an agreement between two or more persons, who, for preventing or putting an end to a lawsuit, adjust their differences by mutual consent, in the manner which they agree on, and which every one of them prefers to the hope of gaining, balanced by the danger of losing.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Morrow v. American Bank & Trust Company

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1970-05-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently June 2013

1 federal appellate · 6 state decisions

2019701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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REDMANN, Judge

¶1(dissenting).

¶2A compromise must be in writing, C.C. art. 3071.

¶3*93The only writing by Ochsner was his letter of February 14, 1968, reciting, in part,

I did agree to pay the remaining $19,000 he requested, with the understanding that a partial payment would first be made (I sent him $5,000-00) and the remainder of the payment would be given him after the following had been finished or corrected to my satisfaction:
******
“Upstairs
******
“Back bedrooms
1. Shore up foundation to prevent the present sinking of the floors between the two rooms, which was preventing closure of the closet doors and the doors leading from the rooms, and was causing cracking of plaster in bedrooms and closets. (This has not been done. Only the bottom of the doors have been shaved down to allow them to open.)
******
As per our agreement, it is my intention to pay Paul [Charbonnet] the remaining $14,000.00 when all the work has been satisfactorily completed.”

¶4In my opinion, since Charbonnet did not accept in writing, and does not now accept, as part of the compromise, an obligation at his cost to “shore up the foundation to prevent the present sinking of the floors”, there is no compromise.

¶5The whole purpose of art. 3071’s requirement that compromise be reduced to writing is exactly to avoid dispute as to what the compromise terms were. Otherwise art. 3071’s stated purpose of compromise, “for preventing or putting an end to a lawsuit,” will be defeated. There will result only a trading of one dispute for another.

¶6In my opinion this matter should be remanded for proceeding on the original cost-plus contract.

¶7Rehearing denied.

REDMANN, J., is of the opinion that the rehearing should be granted.
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