Alaska Law Blog

The Alaska Supreme Court does not often delve into the world of commercial lease clauses. When it does so, we commercial real estate lawyers have to sit up and take notice. The rest of you out there can safely ignore these court decisions because they are B-O-R-I-N-G. But those of us toiling in the field have to read them whether we want to or not.

A few weeks ago the Court decided Carr-Gottstein Foods Co. v. Wasilla, LLC. The case turned on the application of a . . .wait for it now . . . WAIVER clause in a commercial lease. And I mean, really, is it possible to get any S-E-X-I-E-R than that? (OK, maybe a waiver clause tied into an insurance subrogation claim would be just a bit more dazzling, but we can’t always get everything we want.)

It seems that in 1996 Safeway's predecessor (Carr’s) moved out of the stand-alone liquor store it had been leasing in Wasilla from some formerly affiliated company, which I’ll just call Landlord LLC for simplicity. Safeway moved its liquor store into part of its main grocery store space that it was also renting from Landlord LLC. Landlord LLC knew about the move and even helped with it. Landlord LLC later affirmed for lenders that Safeway was not in default on its lease. The head man at Landlord LLC (a lawyer no less) said he thought the move was a technical default under the lease but he decided that he would “keep his options open” and not declare the tenant in default until the “economic ramifications” shook out. (The technical legal term for this is "lying in the weeds.")

Some six years later, after letting the situation ride without complaint, Landlord LLC sued Safeway for breaching the lease. Landlord LLC based its case on the use restrictions in the lease (supermarket only) and the prohibition against subleasing (the liquor store was technically owned by a separate entity). Landlord LLC offered up a creative damage theory to go with its claim. Since Safeway had fully paid its rent to Landlord LLC all along for the main store, Landlord LLC said its damages were the loss of rentals on the stand-alone store that had been vacated years earlier. Sure, the lease for that stand-alone store had expired six years ago, but Landlord LLC claimed that if Safeway had not moved its liquor store to the main building then it would have continued to rent the stand-alone store to sell liquor and it would have paid rent on it all those years.

So the reality was that Landlord LLC was suing to recover rent under a lease that did not actually exist for premises that the supposed tenant did not actually occupy. Can you spell C-H-U-T-Z-P-A-H?

It was not hard for the Supreme Court to decide that this was not a situation crying out for the terrible swift sword of justice. (Or even the terrible slow sword of justice, which would be a more accurate characterization.) But the Court did two interesting things in leaving Landlord LLC hanging out there with its chutzpah flapping in the breeze: (1) the Court decided Landlord LLC had waived its default claims as a matter of law; and (2) the Court sidestepped the anti-waiver clause in the lease by saying it only applied to future breaches.

In finding waiver as a matter of law, the Court’s decision deviated from the conventional wisdom that waiver is a fact issue, one that has to be decided by the jury. The Court in effect held that some instances of waiver are just soooooo obvious that even a lowly Superior Court judge can make that call. (As opposed to letting unsophisticated jurors flip a coin in the back room.) Unfortunately, though, the Court gave no practical guidance for distinguishing waivers as a matter of law that the judge should decide from the more garden variety waivers that are fact issues to be punted to the jury.

In characterizing the waiver clause as being applicable only to future breaches, the Court ducked the more difficult question of on-going obligations under the lease. Sure, the past breaches of the “use” and “sublease” covenants of the lease were waived. But those covenants impose on-going obligations on the tenant that are theoretically violated anew with each day the liquor store remains in operation on the main premises. Isn’t the anti-waiver clause meant to apply in exactly that sort of situation? The Court did not really come to grips with this.

But don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision. I have no doubt the outcome of the case was entirely correct. Even if the anti-waiver clause should not have been sidestepped, the clause itself can be treated as being waived. It’s the same thing as orally amending a contract that says it can only be amended in writing, because the writing requirement itself can be orally modified. It sounds wacky, I know, but there is a lot of 24-carat legal authority vouching for it as the real deal.

And, you know, if the circumstances are so egregious that a mere trial court judge should be able to figure it out, then there’s got to be a waiver of the anti-waiver clause as a matter of law. Because the fundamental truth is, at bottom, the law just does not let you get away with this C-R-A-P.

(Hey, I warned you upfront that it was B-O-R-I-N-G.)

You see it again and again in lawsuits over contracts. Almost everyone gets confused when its comes to conditions. The courts frequently mess up on the rules that apply to conditions. The lawyers often don’t realize the problems they are dealing with involve conditions. And the clients don’t even know what conditions are. The result is that some poor schmuck who has charged off suing the other side thinking he was given the shaft gets smacked down in court. The poor schmuck finds out that, because of the failure of a condition, the shaft was part of his deal all along.

A condition in a contract is simply something that has to happen before something else happens. Easy to say, but not so easy to apply. Conditions are imposed on one party’s obligation to perform under the contract. The contract might say, for example, that Andy Hardy does not have to buy Aunt Milly’s house until Andy Hardy first sells his existing home. If Andy Hardy cannot sell his existing home then the condition has failed and he is never obligated to actually fork over the money for Aunt Milly’s house.

But what if Andy Hardy does not really try very hard to sell his existing home because he’s too busy “pitching some woo” with Polly Benedict? Can Aunt Milly take Andy to court and complain that Andy’s out-of-control hormones kept him from making a decent effort to fulfill the condition? This gets us into conditions creating "implied promises" and the ever popular "excuse of conditions." Aunt Milly might have a good case here, if you can ignore the fact that Andy’s dad is Judge Hardy.

Conditions can be tricky because the contract may not make it clear exactly what is a condition. Time deadlines are often put in contracts but the deadlines are not always stated as being a condition to performance. The courts are no help in straightening the situation out because judges don’t really like conditions very much. The failure of a condition means the jackass on one side of the deal does not have to deliver on his promise. For some odd reason, this raises a judge’s hackles. So a judge can go to some lengths to say that the time deadline in the contract that every normal person would think is pretty darn important does not really mean much at all.

The sale contract says: “The closing deadline shall be April 1, 2008.” When Andy Hardy fails to show up at the title company on that date with his dough, Aunt Milly calls the deal off and makes a separate deal to sell her house to Beezy Anderson for more money. So Andy takes Aunt Milly to court to force her to sell the house to him. Not surprisingly, Judge Hardy sides with his boy Andy on the matter. The old judge (who might well have sat in contracts class with a young Charles Kingsfield) rules the closing deadline wasn’t a condition after all. It was more like an aspirational guideline. So it was okey-dokey for Andy to take a couple of extra weeks to get his cash together and wander into the title company with it. (Besides, Andy had to go to the doctor to get treatment for the social disease he caught along with Polly’s “woo.”)

Poor Aunt Milly’s lawyer is left outside the courthouse scratching his head as to what part of the word “deadline” the judge did not understand. But what the guy really needed in his appearance before the Honorable Old Fogey was a contract provision that said: “The closing deadline shall be April 1, 2008, time being of the essence. The parties’ obligations to close are expressly conditioned on the deadline being met.” (That last sentence is actually redundant, since "time being of the essence" is a phrase of art that means performance on time is an express condition. But you can't count on judges actually knowing this, since its not explained on red wine labels or anything else a judge is likely to actually read. So it does not hurt to use the lawyer's trick of saying the same thing over again in a different way. In fact, if I was writing the contract, I would be tempted to drive the point home by adding the line: “And judge, we really, really mean it.")

The law on contract conditions can get trickier still when you delve into the necromancy of “constructive conditions” and the accompanying two-headed beast of "substantial performance/material breach." The law here is filled with vague lists of "factors" that have to be considered, along with brain-numbing concepts. Its enough to make strong men and women of the Bar promise the Lord-High-Chancellor-of-Us-All that they will swear off “woo” forever if they can just get a clue about what the heck this legal mumbo-jumbo means. If you have the ill-fortune to stumble into this area, you might be able to figure out the nuances of the law after a good bit of study. But you are going to have a damned hard time getting old Judge Hardy to follow along, especially after he's had a glass or two of red wine.

The court system is a very strange place. Too often people put themselves inside it when they have no business being there. They start out all revved up about righting some perceived injustice. But they quickly discover that they have just placed their foot on the first step down into Hades and they cannot back out. They’d be much better off steering clear of the courts altogether.

Many years ago, I had an odd encounter when I was clerking for a federal judge in Portland, just after I graduated from law school. The Portland federal courthouse in those days had nothing like the security the courthouses now have. Anyone could get inside the courthouse and walk right up to the door of the judge’s chambers, if so inclined. The door to our chambers was kept locked, though. There was a camera and an intercom system just outside the door. Visitors had to push the buzzer to connect with the judge’s secretary before she would admit them through the door. The secretary was a formidable old battleaxe, who disliked me and all other pipsqueak law clerks something fierce. But the whole security set up was nothing that a determined nutjob could not have gotten past if he was bent on getting revenge against the judge.

There weren’t many people who actually bothered trying to be admitted to chambers. But we did get a regular visitor to the checkpoint right outside the door. Every month or so an older looking gentleman would show up. He was always dressed neatly but he was clearly not quite all there mentally. He would walk up to the security camera and, without pushing the buzzer to connect on the intercom, he would hold up a hand-written piece of paper. He would stand there for maybe 15 minutes, holding his paper up to the security camera. If he stood there too long, the battleaxe would call someone to come up from the clerk’s office to get rid of him, but he would always wander off before anyone actually showed up to escort him out.

One day curiosity got the better of me. After the guy had been standing there with his paper up to the camera for maybe 15 minutes, I went out to see what this fellow was all about. The battleaxe growled at me but I went out nonetheless. The guy was turning to leave just as I walked out the door. He was shocked to see me; it must have been like one of the gods had just descended from Olympus to mingle with the mortals.

“Can I help you?” I asked. The guy stared at me all wide-eyed and held out his piece of paper. I looked at it but I couldn’t make out what it was trying to say. The words were in English but they made no sense at all.

“I don’t understand,” I said. He started talking in a strange language that I had never heard before. “Prosim zabramit mi,” he said. It could have been Czech or another Slavic tongue, but to me it made as much sense as Klingon.

He gestured emphatically to the paper. “Prosim zabramit mi!” And he held it up in front of my face. The old battleaxe, who had been watching on the security camera, barked over the intercom: “I’m calling the U.S. Marshal!”

The guy seemed harmless enough so I didn’t want to see him dragged away in handcuffs. I put my hand on his shoulder and lead him back down the hallway to the elevator. As we were waiting for the elevator to show up, he was jabbering away in that strange lingo of his.

The elevator arrived finally and I gently nudged him into it. He held up the paper to my face again, through the open door. Right then it occured to me that this guy just wanted someone to hear about his plight. He had a grievance and he wanted to petition the government for redress, just like it says in the Constitution. He thought that holding the paper up to the camera was the way you asked for relief from the court.

As the door started to close I said to him: “Sir, we have heard your complaint and we will look into it.” I gave him the Vulcan salute that Mr. Spock used on Star Trek. The guy put his hands down and, as the door closed, he smiled so brightly it was like a Roman candle went off in that elevator car.

The guy never showed up outside our chambers again. I guess he was content that his grievance had been heard, whatever it was. And, although I couldn’t be sure, it kind of seemed like the old battleaxe was just a wee bit nicer to me afterwards.

Now when I have clients who are bound and determined to file a lawsuit and sue the evil snakes on the other side, I always caution them about getting in over their heads. I’m also tempted to take them over to the courthouse and have them just tell their tale to one of the security cameras there, instead of actually filing a lawsuit. They would probably feel better afterwards and in most cases it would save them a lot of money and anguish in the long run.

* * * *
Read up on the Czech language here.

You can buy a Klingon dictionary and other useless stuff through the Klingon Language Institute.

The U.S. Marshals Service has its own website with a lot of interesting things on it, including their "Most Wanted" list. And don't try to sneak a cell phone past them at the federal courthouse because they still have the legal authority to form a posse to hunt down outlaws.

The Alaska Supreme Court’s decision last week in Mullins v. Oates is a cautionary tale for those selling real estate in Alaska. The case shows that you have to be careful about how your deal gets put together. For just this reason, its always helpful to have a pessimistic, worrywart real estate lawyer in your corner who can point out the pitfalls up ahead.

In the Mullins case, Alice Oates, the owner of some land and a building in the burgeoning metroplex of Tok, Alaska, sold the property to Margret Mullins. Mullins apparently lacked the ability to get a bank loan so Oates engaged in a form of owner financing for the deal. Oates sold the property to Mullins under a contract of sale. (The phrase “contract of sale” should mean that red lights are flashing for all the cynical real estate lawyers out there. The red lights are also probably flashing even for the optimistic, sunny-side-of-the-street real estate lawyers out there, if there actually are any such creatures.)

You see, a sale on a contract means that the seller hangs on to the title to the real estate until the seller is paid in full. The buyer gets the immediate right to occupy the property and can even make improvements to it while its being paid off. But if the buyer fails to make the required payments, the contract says that the seller can take the property back and throw the buyer out into the street. At least, the contract gives the seller that right in theory.

The problem with this arrangement is that the law does not know what to do when a default occurs. Equity abhors a forfeiture and so do most judges. The courts don’t like to see the poor buyer get stiffed on the property after perhaps making years of payments and even erecting a building or two. To complicate matters further, there is no easy remedy available to the seller to enforce the requirement that the buyer get lost after failing to make the payments. The non-judicial foreclosure procedure that is available for deeds of trust does not apply to contract deals. The contract seller ordinarily has to go to court for a judicial foreclosure to actually terminate the buyer’s rights.

(As an aside, I will point out that on occasion one comes across a lower court judge who has no problem enforcing a contract as written, even if it means a forfeiture occurs. These rare and enlightened beings -- who are like a fresh summer breeze blowing through the mausoleum that is the courthouse -- are almost certain to have the highest reversal rates in the appellate courts.)

So poor Alice Oates had to go to court to throw out Margret Mullins when the required payments were not made. It turned out that the sweet, hard-working Maggie Mullins who Oates originally made her deal with later changed into the buyer from hell. The transformation was one worthy of Large Marge in the movie Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Large Marge Mullins represented herself in the lawsuit and battled over nearly everything. The parties eventually struck a settlement, but Mullins disavowed it and went as far as accusing the Magistrate who brokered the deal of coercion. Large Marge also wrapped herself in the Constitution, desperately claiming that she was being deprived of equal protection of the law and due process by being held to the deal she had made.

The Alaska Supreme Court rejected Large Marge’s arguments and upheld the lower court’s judgment in favor of Alice Oates. The end result was a judgment confirming the property belonged to Oates. The only problem was that the confirmation finally came more than six full years after Mullins stopped making payments on the property. This is in contrast to the four or five months that a non-judicial foreclosure would have taken if the original deal had been structured correctly.

But have we heard the last of Margret Mullins? Perhaps not. Its unclear whether the judgment in Alice Oates' favor is really an order for judicial foreclosure or not. The argument can be made that it has to viewed that way. In a judicial foreclosure setting, Mullins would have a one-year right of redemption through which she could regain the property. We can only hope that Large Marge Mullins does not tumble to this issue. Or just maybe she will come to the belated realization that nothing in the Tok metroplex is really worth fighting over after all.

By the way, the best line from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure comes when Pee-Wee is talking with the cafe waitress, Simone, about her dream to live in Paris one day. Pee-Wee encourages Simone to just go for it, at which point the following dialogue occurs:

Simone: I know you're right, Pee-Wee. But, . . .

Pee-Wee: Everyone I know has a big "But." (Sigh.) C'mon, Simone, let's talk about your big "But."

The Alaska Supreme Court issued two new opinions today. Moore v. Peak Oilfield Service Co. reaffirmed prior Alaska Supreme Court case law that a defendant in a civil personal injury lawsuit who is convicted of driving while intoxicated must be found to have acted negligently and reckless as a matter of law. The Court further clarified that such a ruling did not preclude the defendant driver from arguing that his or her negligence/recklessness was not a legal cause of the plaintiff's injury.

In Amerada Hess Pipeline Corp. v. Regulatory Commission of Alaska, the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court's finding that shipping rates charged by the owners of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline were unreasonable and unjust from 1997 to 2007 and that refunds must be given. The Alaska Supreme Court did not address the issues raised by the pipeline owners, but incorporated by reference the Superior Court's 44 page opinion.

A popular form of incorporation that Atkinson Conway & Gagnon often deals with, both in creating them and in structuring deals using them, is the Limited Liability Corporation. There is, however, a nasty little penalty lurking in Alaska’s Limited Liability Company statute that both other practitioners in this state and owners and managers of those LLCs should be aware of.

As with most business forms, members of an LLC have a statutory right to review the books and records of the LLC. What is different about LLCs, is that if a manger or member of an LLC refuses a member’s rightful demand to examine the books of the LLC, that manager or member is personally liableto the demanding member for a penalty in the amount of either $5,000 or 10% of the value of the demanding member’s interest in the LLC, whichever is greater. Consequently, by refusing a rightful demand to review the books and records of an LLC, a manager or member of an LLC runs not only the risk of litigation to compel production of the books but personal liability that, for a highly valued LLC, could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So think twice about shooting off that snide letter to your business partner, telling him to go stick his head in the sand when he asks to see the books. You just might get a costly bill in return.

Continue reading for the full statute.

Continue reading " A Trap For The Unwary In Alaska's LLC Statute " »

In today’s specialized and interconnected business world, banks, law firms, and accountants often find themselves drawn into litigation over financial statements that are either incomplete or false. The Enron and WorldCom cases are great examples of this. In those cases, plaintiffs, often shareholders and creditors, sue law firms, banks, and accountants, alleging that they are liable for their losses because they “aided and abetted” directors and officers who defrauded the company and shareholders. Atkinson Conway & Gagnon has litigated these claims on several occasions in Alaska, both in the course of defending banks and law firms and in representing corporations against accountants that have aided company officers and directors in defrauding the corporation.

This theory of liability, also known as “tortuous assistance of breach of fiduciary duty” can significantly expand the liability of accountants, banks, and law firms, including exposing them to joint and several liability in states that otherwise provide for strict allocation of fault, such as Alaska.

On January 15, 2008, the United States Supreme Court issued an important decision limiting the scope of “aiding and abetting claims.”. Ruling 4 to 3, the United States Supreme Court held that Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 did not authorize a private right of action against third parties for aiding and abetting violations of securities law. Instead, plaintiffs who wish to sue banks, accountants and law firms for securities law violations must show that they relied upon an affirmative material misrepresentations by those entities. While banks, law firms, and accountants may be subject to aiding and abetting liability when they have a direct relationship with aggrieved plaintiffs, this is an important decision that limits the liability faced by banks, accountants, and law firms in the shareholder lawsuits that are so often filed when negative financial information is released by corporations.

Atkinson Conway & Gagnon and all Alaskans are carefully watching the litigation arising out of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. After more than eighteen years, the case is still active. In late 2006, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a $2.5 billion punitive damage award against Exxon. With interest, the total punitive damage award against Exxon is estimated to be in excess of $4.5 billion. As expected, Exxon has appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court.

The primary focus of Exxon’s appeal is the argument that punitive damages were not available under traditional maritime principles. Exxon is not seeking to just reduce the punitive damage award, but eliminate it entirely. The United States Supreme Court has a short summary of the issues it will be deciding.

Oral argument before the United States Supreme Court is scheduled for Wednesday, February 27, 2008. Below are links to the Supreme Court briefs that have been filed, including amicus briefs. Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision, it is certain that all Alaskans will be closely following this case and that it will have substantial impacts on both Alaskans and the law governing the availability punitive damages.

Primary briefs

Exxon's Appeal Brief

Plaintiff's Appeal Brief

Amicus Briefs

In support of Exxon

Chamber of Commerce amicus brief

Transport and Shipowners amicus brief

American Petroleum Institute amicus brief

Washington Legal Foundation amicus brief

Product Liability Advisory Council amicus brief

In support of Plaintiffs

Alaska Legislative Council Amicus Brief

Senator Stevens, Senator Murkowski, and Representative Young's amicus brief