Attempt to Pass on the Hot Potato Nixed

In a perhaps somewhat unsurprising but good holding, the Seventh Circuit has nixed a company’s attempt to not live up to its contractual promises regarding the technical functions and warranties of one of its products.

The plaintiff bought an industrial refrigeration system. The contract provided that if the system “does not meet the [contractually stipulated] requirements, defendants shall immediately, upon notice, replace or repair same or remedy any deficiency without expense to [plaintiffs].” When it came to living up to that promise, however, defendants produced a slew of other excuses for the problem such as installation errors, problems with the conditions at the facility where the system was installed, flawed wiring performed by other parties, etc.

The court found that even though defendant had presented evidence of a number of equally plausible causes, it had not provided proof that those alternative causes in fact caused the problem. Defendant, said the court, had promised to “meet requirements [sic] of plan and specifications.” Since the system did not work, defendants were liable for fixing the problem under the plain language of the contract.

It’s nice to see that at least some courts do not let contractual parties get away with such attempted, after-the-fact shirking of responsibility after the fact. A contractual promise is a promise. Surely, major industrial companies have internalized the costs of potentially having to do an odd repair here and there that they don’t believe is their fault (if that truly were the case here…). It’s somewhat amazing to see the lengths some companies will go to in order not to live up to their ends of the bargain. In this case, that attempt was nixed.

The case is Dual Temp of Illinois v. Hench Control, Inc., 2016 WL 2642030.