April Productions, Inc. v. G. Schirmer, Inc.

Probably every court in the land is tempted, occasionally, to “ construe ” contracts so as to make them mean what the courts think they should have said in the first place. But the old, safe rule is that we judges must ‘ ‘ concern ourselves with what the parties intended, but only to the extent that they evidenced what they intended by what they wrote ” (Raleigh Associates v. Henry, 302 N. Y. 467, 473). The suit we are now deciding is brought to enforce a plain, simple, home-drawn agreement between two highly experienced business concerns. An attempt by us to write new terms into it is…