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Petersen v. Genesis Learning Centers12/13/2005
ffidavit asserts that Crider told Plaintiffs' counsel that she "would have to continue to prepare for trial, which would continue to erode the [policy] limits . . . ." According to Crider's affidavit, Plaintiffs' counsel asked Crider if TII would keep its offer of "policy limits" open for forty-eight hours, and Crider agreed to keep the offer of "policy limits" open until May 13, 2004. Since Plaintiffs did not dispute the accuracy of Crider's affidavit, we assume the assertions therein to be true in assessing the trial court's decision.
In our view, an ambiguity arose when Plaintiffs requested, and TII agreed, to keep "the offer" open for forty-eight (48) hours. At that point, it was unclear what "offer" was on the table. The Plaintiffs apparently interpreted the offer to be $575,000, while TII believed the offer was for an as-yet undetermined amount, the remaining policy limits available at the time the offer was made. The ambiguity continued in the "keep the offer open" conversation, since neither party mentioned a specific dollar amount and the parties did not include any such language in their writings regarding keeping the offer open. Most importantly, the Plaintiffs did not obtain any kind of "stand still" agreement, whereby the amount of the offer pursuant to the withering limits policy would stay the same while the Plaintiffs considered whether to accept it. The Plaintiffs apparently assumed that "keeping the offer open" would amount to such as agreement; however, in the face of Crider's admonitions that they would continue incurring trial preparation expenses, it would not. Therefore, the two key ambiguities were (1) the initial amount of the offer and (2) whether that initial offer amount would remain unchanged while the Plaintiffs considered it. Under these circumstances, we must conclude that the parties did not have a meeting of the minds as to the essential terms of a settlement agreement, and that the trial court's decision to enforce the agreement must be reversed.
The decision of the trial court is reversed. Costs on appeal are to be taxed equally to Appellees Richard Petersen and Karen Fosmire, for which execution may issue, if necessary.
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