California Legal Brief

The Rule of Gonzalez v. Community Mortuary is that the affirmative defense of impracticability of performance is an equitable defense that must be decided by a judge, not a jury, under circumstances where a party seeks excuse from contract performance due to events making performance impracticable through no fault of their own.

Appeal from judgment after jury trial in Superior Court, San Diego County.

Defendant Appellants were Community Mortuary, Inc. and Dolores Humphrey — the mortuary and funeral arranger who contracted to retrieve, embalm and bury Jose Gonzalez Jr.'s body but received the wrong body due to a Texas medical examiner's mix-up.

Plaintiff Respondents were Ricardo Omar Gonzalez, Jose Carlos Gonzalez Sr., Querubeck Selenna Gonzalez, Jasmin Karina Gonzalez, Isack Malaquias Gonzalez, Celina Gonzalez, and Edna Tamara Gonzalez — family members of the deceased who sued when they discovered the wrong body at the funeral viewing.

The suit sounded in breach of contract and negligence. The family sued when they discovered at the funeral viewing that Community had the wrong body, while Jose's actual remains had been mistakenly cremated in Texas.

The key substantive facts leading to the suit were that Jose Gonzalez Jr. died in Texas and the medical examiner mixed up his body with Jesse Gilbert Gonzales who died one day later. Jose's body was mistakenly sent to a donor program and cremated, while Jesse's body was sent to Community Mortuary in California. The family discovered the error at the funeral viewing when they opened the casket.

The procedural result leading to the Appeal: The trial court submitted Community's affirmative defense of impracticability of performance to the jury for decision, and the jury found the defense established, ruling that Community was excused from contract performance due to impossibility/impracticability.

The key questions on Appeal: 1. Whether the affirmative defense of impracticability of performance should be decided by a judge or jury. 2. Whether extended family members had standing to sue for breach of contract as third party beneficiaries.

The Appellate Court held that impracticability of performance is an equitable defense that must be decided by a judge, not a jury, because it requires weighing equitable considerations about fundamental fairness, risk allocation, and basic assumptions of the parties. However, only the contracting party (the widow) had standing to sue for breach of contract, not extended family members as third party beneficiaries.

The case is inapplicable when the impossibility defense involves literal impossibility due to act of God, change in law, or actions of another party as it existed in English common law before 1850, which may carry a right to jury trial.

The case leaves open whether parties have a right to jury trial on traditional impossibility defenses involving literal impossibility due to acts of God, legal changes, or third party actions, and what specific jury instruction language would be proper for impracticability defenses.