Becker v. Lagerquist Bros., Inc.

Appellant corporation, defendant below, appeals from a judgment requiring specific performance of an oral agreement to pave a street or, in the alternative, to pay the cost thereof.

The gravamen of appellant’s contention is that, under the parol evidence rule, the earnest-money receipt precluded extrinsic proof of an oral agreement to pave the street. Quite recently, in Barber v. Rochester, 52 Wn. (2d) 691, 328 P. (2d) 711, we reviewed the subject and concluded that the so-called parol evidence rule was not an exclusionary device but, on the contrary, was a basic tenet of substantive law and…