We’ve been talking about contract interpretation in my Contracts class lately and I’m always struck by how many cases involve a lower court ruling of ambiguity and then an appellate court reversal of that ruling, because it always strikes me as such a funny thing. The very definition of ambiguity would seem to be “multiple people disagreeing on the meaning of the word,” but the appellate court decisions in those cases necessarily have to dismiss the reasonableness of the lower court’s understanding of the meaning in order to assert that the meaning is SO OBVIOUS. This always makes these cases feel a little more…condescending? Than the typical reversal. Like, “We don’t know what you were so confused about, lower court, this is OBVIOUS.”

A recent case out of California, Borgwat v. Shasta Union Elementary School District, No. C078692, is another example of this. The plaintiff, upon retiring from the defendant, was entitled to a monthly post-retirement contribution toward her “medical insurance coverage.” For a couple of years, the defendant paid the contribution toward the plaintiff’s dental and vision coverage. But then the defendant concluded that dental and vision insurance was not included in “medical insurance coverage” and ceased paying the contribution. This lawsuit resulted.

The lower court found the phrase “medical insurance coverage” to be ambiguous and allowed extrinsic evidence to illuminate its definition, including the fact that the defendant had initially paid the plaintiff the contribution for a few years. Therefore, the lower court endorsed the plaintiff’s interpretation that “medical insurance coverage” included dental and vision insurance.

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