American Contract Law for a Global Age, 2017a

do so because of some identified ambiguity, unnecessarily denigrates the contract and
unsettles the law.
Accordingly, the Appellate Division order should be reversed, with costs,
defendants’ motion for summary judgment granted, and the complaint dismissed.
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Review Question 1. Notice that the W.W.W. Associates case is resolved on
summary judgment, meaning (in typical summary judgment language) that the court
determined there was “no genuine issue of material fact” and that defendant sellers
were “entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” How can that possibly be right when
the only evidence of what the parties meant by the words of the contract was filed by
the plaintiff? If anyone wins the case on summary judgment, shouldn’t it be the
plaintiff who actually had interpretive evidence?
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IN RE ESTATE OF SOPER
Supreme Court of Minnesota
196 Minn. 60, 264 N.W. 427 (1935)
JULIUS J. OLSON, J.
Ira Soper married Adeline Westphal in 1911. They lived in Louisville, and had
three daughters. In 1921, Soper faked his own suicide and disappeared, abandoning
his wife and children. Soper changed his name to John Young, moved to Minneapolis,
went into business, and eventually married Gertrude Whitby, a marriage that was
bigamous because his marriage to Adeline had never ended. Soper/Young prospered,
and took out an insurance policy which provided that the money should be paid on
his death to “the wife of the deceased [insured] if living.” When he died, the insurance
company paid the money to Gertrude. Adeline discovered the facts, and she and
Soper/Young’s executor sued to recover the money. Adeline’s theory was that, in law,
she was the only lawful “wife of the deceased” and thus was entitled to the money.
Gertrude argued that Soper/Young had intended for her to have the money, not
Adeline.]
Gertrude neither did nor could take anything as the “wife” of Young. 2 As a
matter of law she never became such. But this conclusion does not solve our problem
because she does not lay claim to the insurance merely as his lawful wife, but as the
person intended to be the beneficiary under the escrow agreement as fully as if her
name had been written into that contract instead of the word “wife.” Plaintiffs
2 [That is, Gertrude was not a lawful wife because Soper/Young was already married, and so
she could not inherit under Minnesota law. Adeline was the lawful spouse and heir.—Eds.]
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362 CHAPTER VI: TERMS AND INTERPRETATION