Drake v. Sample

¶1(dissenting).

¶2I dissent.

¶3The majority opinion gives too much credence to the trial court’s findings, and overlooks what it failed to find! The trial court completely ignored the issue of conditional offer which was properly before it.* By affirming this decision we have effectively foreclosed anyone from requiring a written contract before they are to be bound, because I cannot conceive of any set of circumstances where a party could do more to indicate such intention than the Samples have in this case. This is a dangerous precedent to set on this record.

¶4The trial court has rewritten, the contract. There is nothing clearer in the record than that Samples wanted $5,000 down shortly after January 1, 1974, and the balance on payments with interest at seven percent from that date. First, Attorney Gunderson rather magnanimously decided that Drakes should have six months’ interest-free use of the land, and then the trial court gratuitously extended that to approximately three years in its decision of December 15, 1976.