Kaljian

Respondents Thomas E. Kaljian and Todd Merrill recovered judgment based on a jury’s special verdict against appellants Richard Menezes, Herman Menezes, John Menezes, and Triple M Cattle Company. The judgment was for $2,165,111, consisting of $2,090,375 in contract damages, $49,736 in fraud damages, and $25,000 in punitive damages. The action arose from Menezes’ termination of an alleged oral agreement for the development of certain real property owned by Menezes.

We will conclude that prejudicial error occurred when the trial court rejected Menezes’s request for jury instructions on the statute of frauds. We will thus remand for retrial on the contract cause of action. In all other respects we will conclude the judgment was error free.

Facts

In or around 1980, Menezes donated a 10-acre parcel of land outside Los Banos (hereinafter the City) as a site for a branch of Merced Junior College. He retained adjacent property of about 150 acres (College Greens) with the hope of eventually annexing it to the City and developing it as residential property.

Development of College Greens was not reasonably possible until the property was annexed to the City. Early steps toward…