Facts: Hope, who owned a movie theatre, hired movie equipment from RCA under a written contract. The equipment supplied by RCA was second-hand, not new. The written contract had listed what equipment was being leased but contained no provisions about whether it was to be new or not. Hope wanted to lead evidence that he and RCA had negotiated about this matter and had intended that new equipment should be supplied.
Issue: Did the failure of the written contract to stipulate whether the equipment should be new create an ambiguity and thus allow evidence of further orally agreed terms?
Decision: There was no ambiguity in the written terms which would allow the parol evidence rule to be avoided and evidence introduced of additional oral terms.
Reason: Ambiguity is not created by the use of a general description of things e.g., referring to them only by their class or kind). A general class of things may contain individual items with different attributes, but that does not mean that the general description makes their identification uncertain. To allow evidence in such cases of what particular attributes were discussed orally would be to add further terms to an apparently complete written contract (which the parol evidence rule does not allow) rather than resolving a real ambiguity (which the rule permits).