Say Cheese: is written corroboration needed for exclusivity?

In Distribuidora VW, Inc. v. Old Fashioned, Inc., 2014 WL 1309955 (D.P.R. March 31, 2014)(J, García-Gregory), plaintiff, a Puerto Rican cheese distributor, sued the defendant-principal, a Wisconsin cheese manufacturer, claiming improper termination of their 10 year-old relationship under the sales representative Law 21 and for breach of contract. The distributor had continued without a written agreement the business relationship that existed between the prior distributor and the manufacturer.

Defendant moved for summary judgment arguing that plaintiff could not prove exclusivity, an essential element of a Law 21 claim. Defendant’s primary argument was that the First Circuit’s decision in Garita Hotel v. Ponce Federal, 122 F. 3d. 88, 89 (1st Cir. 1997) compelled the conclusion that the Commerce Code required written corroboration of all the essential elements of a contract and there was no evidence to corroborate a written exclusivity appointment. Not so fast, retorted the District Court. Garita is “wrong”. Why? For one thing, according to the Commerce Code, commercial contracts are valid and binding regardless of “the form”, but the “testimony of witnesses shall not in itself be sufficient” to prove the existence of “a contract” unless it concurs with other evidence. It is the existence of the contract that cannot be admitted on the basis of oral testimony alone but must concur with other evidence. Citing Vila & Hmnos, 17 P.R. Trans. 987 (1986). If you read the plain language of Article 82 of the Commerce Code this strikes me as being right; that is, unless Garita was right.

While no one appeared to dispute the existence of a sales representation agreement from a course of dealings, including business records that must have corroborated the existence of an agreement, the Commerce Code did not require written corroboration of the exclusivity element or any other essential element of that verbal contract. “In a nutshell, after a contract is proven to exist with something more than just oral testimony, the contours of the contract’s scope may be mapped with whatever admissible evidence is available.” This brave holding tests the waters of First Circuit precedent on an issue of Puerto Rico substantive law and is admittedly a significant departure from what distribution law practitioners have understood or misunderstood for over two decades.

Further, the Court noted two legal permutations of exclusivity: where the defendant agreed not to appoint another agent or sell directly in the territory or the agent agreed to sell exclusively the products of the principal and no other competing product. Because the Court found a dispute of material fact as to whether there was an exclusive contract from a course of dealings as plaintiff was de facto the only distributor, the Court denied the motion for summary judgment. The Court determined that it was for the jury to give weight to any “smoking gun evidence”, if it existed, whether the principal “made an affirmative concession of exclusivity to the representative.” Finally, the Court dismissed the breach of contract claim because there was no evidence that the contract had a definite period; thus, was terminable at will.