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Sheffield v. Darby

Defendant's statements that horse plaintiff wished to buy had no problems and was a good show horse amounted to mere puffing upon which a fraud claim could not be based.

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After watching a male horse owned by Terry and Manita Darby perform at a horse show, Ashley Sheffield contacted the Darbys about buying him. The Darbys assured her that the horse had no problems and would make a good show horse for use in competition. In the presence of and in consultation with her father who raised horses for a business, Sheffield rode the horse and decided to purchase him for $8,500.00. Within three weeks Sheffield and her trainer discerned that the horse was lame. Sheffield sued the Darbys for fraud and for breach of express and implied warranties, and the court entered summary judgment in favor of the Darbys on all claims. We affirm, holding that the representations concerning the horse were either true or unactionable statements of opinion mere “puffing”.

1. At the outset, we note that the record in Case No. A00A0558 is incomplete, even though the notice of appeal directs the clerk to omit nothing from the record on appeal. Both parties in their appellate briefs refer repeatedly to testimony from Ashley Sheffield’s deposition and the exhibits thereto, yet that deposition is not included in the record transmitted to this Court nor was it even filed in the trial court until a month after this appeal had been docketed. The record has not been supplemented. “We are limited to review only that which is contained in the appellate record,”1 and thus cannot consider the alleged testimony from the missing deposition.2 Moreover, it was obviously not before the trial court at the time it entered summary judgment.

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