Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 24-1651 Filed October 7, 2026 _______________ Bob Robbins and Karen Robbins, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. Caleb Wilson and Danyel Wilson, Defendants–Appellees. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Warren County, The Honorable Jeffrey Farrell, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Matthew G. Sease of Sease & Wadding, Des Moines, attorney for appellant. Jeffrey A. Egge of Wilson, Egge & Loya, P.C., Waukee, attorney for appellee. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Schumacher, P.J., and Badding and Langholz, JJ. Opinion by Langholz, J. 1 LANGHOLZ, Judge. Bob Robbins claims that he made an oral contract with Caleb Wilson to buy roughly four acres of land owned by Wilson and his wife in rural Warren County. 1 Beyond Robbins’s own testimony, he also points to nine $1,000 cashier’s checks that he paid to Wilson over about a year as evidence of the contract. But Wilson claims that they never made a land contract, the checks were payment for letting Robbins store belongings on his land, and he repeatedly told Robbins that the land was not for sale and Robbins needed to stop cutting down trees. And at the bench trial, Wilson presented testimony of a neighbor who witnessed one of the confrontations between Robbins and Wilson and testimony of the land’s co-owner, his wife, that she never discussed selling the land with Wilson or Robbins. Faced with “largely a ‘he said/he said’” factual dispute, the district court found Wilson more credible and concluded that Robbins failed to meet his burden to prove an oral contract by clear, satisfactory, and convincing evidence. The court thus rejected Robbins’s breach-of-contract claim seeking specific performance (transfer of the land). And the court rejected Robbins’s unjust-enrichment claim seeking return of the $9,000, reasoning that Wilson’s retention of the money was not unjust because Robbins had been allowed to store his belongings on the land, had cut down Wilson’s trees, and had rejected Wilson’s attempts to return the money three years before. Robbins now appeals, challenging both rulings. 1 Robbins’s wife joined as a plaintiff in this suit. And the Robbinses named both of the Wilsons as defendants. For readability—and because Wilson and Robbins are the key players in this dispute and their respective interests align with their spouses—we do not independently name their spouses when referring to the parties and their arguments. 2 On our de novo review, giving appropriate deference to the district court’s better vantage point for finding facts and assessing credibility, we affirm. A party seeking to prove an oral contract for the transfer of land has our highest civil burden of proof. So while Robbins’s claim had some evidentiary support, we agree with the district court that he failed to prove the existence of the oral contract by clear, satisfactory, and convincing evidence. We also agree with the district court’s finding that under the totality of the circumstances, it was not inequitable for Wilson to retain the $9,000 that Robbins paid in cashier’s checks. I. Background Facts and Proceedings Robbins and Wilson have known each other for years, mostly interacting through their work. But then in 2017, Robbins started renting an old farmhouse from Wilson that was on the same acreage as Wilson’s home. The parties did not sign a written lease. But they orally agreed that Robbins would be responsible for the repairs and cleaning to make the farmhouse habitable and would pay rent to Wilson. At first, the rent was $400 per month. It eventually increased to $500 per month. And Robbins made significant improvements to the farmhouse—installing an underground power line, a new breaker box, and a new water heater. He also cleaned the house—which included removing “about a foot-and-a-half” of garbage in the living room. The arrangement continued without incident until April 2019, when a fire destroyed the farmhouse along with much of Robbins’s property inside. From this point on, the parties’ versions of the facts diverge. According to Wilson, about a month after the fire, Wilson told Robbins he would need to get his stuff moved out from around the farmhouse so they could continue with demolition and cleanup. Robbins asked if he could keep 3 his belongings elsewhere on Wilson’s land and told Wilson that he would pay him rent. Wilson agreed to let him store them in a field on the southern corner of his land. And from then on, Robbins stored many items—including at least a pickup truck, a pool table, and a chicken coop—on the land. Robbins agrees that he moved his belongings onto the field in the southern corner of Wilson’s land. But he says he did so only after he and Wilson agreed that he would buy that land—about “four acres”—for “$40,000 to be paid off in four years.” He claims that he and Wilson drove out to that part of the property and Wilson showed him exactly where the border of the four-acre parcel would be. And he says that they agreed that while making payments, he could put his “driveway and culvert in” so he could start building a home on the land at the end of the four years. Sometime after July 5, 2019, Robbins began sporadically delivering nine $1,000 cashier’s checks to Wilson.2 Wilson eventually deposited all nine checks—the last in August 2020. Each of the nine cashier’s checks included a typed notation in the memo line numbering the payment from “#1” to “#10”—Robbins inadvertently skipped check “#3.” Robbins says that these were nine installment payments under the oral contract to buy the land. But Wilson believed they were rent payments for Robbins’s use of the land to 2 The record is not clear precisely when the checks were delivered to Wilson. But we know the range of potential delivery dates for each check based on when each was issued to Robbins and deposited by Wilson. The first three checks were issued on July 5, July 17, and August 23, 2019, and were all deposited on September 17, 2019. Checks issued on September 19 and October 19, 2019, were deposited on October 31, 2019. A November 20, 2019, check was deposited on March 5, 2020. Checks issued on December 23, 2019, and February 21, 2020, were deposited on March 9, 2020. And the last check, issued on May 28, 2020, was deposited on August 3, 2020. 4 store his property. And Wilson is adamant that he never agreed to sell any land to Robbins. In addition to storing his things on the land, Robbins began preparing the land to build a house. He claims that within a month of making the first payment in the summer of 2019 he started clearing brush and trees and eventually also planted about two dozen fir trees and “put rerod down in the ground.” And he says that Wilson knew what he was doing, had visited him “once or twice when I was working back there,” and had never voiced any objection, but once had said “something about the land may not be big enough or something.” Wilson, on the other hand, claims that he first became aware that Robbins was making changes to the land in the summer of 2020. Wilson says that when he noticed that Robbins was cutting down trees, he immediately told him to stop, reminded him that he was not selling the land, and asked him to get all his things off the land. One of Wilson’s neighbors was present for this confrontation. And when Wilson saw Robbins cutting down more trees the next summer, he again stopped him and told him to leave the land. Shortly after this confrontation in the summer of 2021, Robbins dropped off two $15,000 cashier’s checks at Wilson’s home, leaving them with his family members. Although the checks were dated December 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, Wilson says they were delivered just a few weeks apart in the summer of 2021. The first check had a memo notation, “LAND PAYMENT” and the second noted “PAYMENT IN FULL.” Wilson then called Robbins and asked to meet. Wilson brought the two uncashed $15,000 cashier’s checks and a check for $9,000 and tried to give them back to Robbins. He told Robbins, “here is all your money back, get 5 your stuff off my property.” But Robbins refused to accept the checks and threatened to sue Wilson “for all the stuff he lost in the fire” and “all the money lost, for taking this out of his retirement,” unless Wilson sold the land. In April 2022, Robbins sued Wilson for breach of an oral contract to sell the land, seeking specific performance of the contract. He also asserted an unjust-enrichment claim, seeking return of the $39,000 that he paid Wilson. Wilson responded by asserting three counterclaims against Robbins—conversion, trespass, and treble damages for injury to trees under Iowa Code section 658.4 (2022)—mainly focused on Robbins’s conduct cutting down Wilson’s trees. During a half-day bench trial in July 2024, the district court received documentary evidence and heard testimony from Robbins, Wilson, Wilson’s wife, and Wilson’s neighbor. And in a thorough written ruling, the court found that Robbins failed to prove his breach-of-contract claim. On Robbins’s unjust-enrichment claim, the court ordered Wilson to return the two uncashed $15,000 cashier’s checks but found that Wilson’s retention of the $9,000 from the nine payments Robbins made in 2019 and 2020 was not unjust. The court also denied Wilson’s counterclaims seeking recovery for his destroyed trees, reasoning that it had factored in those losses when ruling on Robbins’s unjust-enrichment claim. Only Robbins appeals. II. Breach of Contract Robbins first argues that the district court erred in finding that he failed to prove the existence of an oral contract to sell the land and thus dismissing his breach-of-contract claim seeking specific performance of that contract. “[W]hen a plaintiff seeks specific performance of an oral contract on land, the contract must be established by a preponderance of the clear, 6 satisfactory and convincing evidence.” Peterson v. Petersen, 355 N.W.2d 26, 29 (Iowa 1984). This burden of proof “is the highest evidentiary burden in civil cases” and “means there must be no serious or substantial doubt about the correctness of a particular conclusion drawn from the evidence.” In re N.C., 952 N.W.2d 151, 153 (Iowa 2020) (cleaned up); see also Raim v. Stancel, 339 N.W.2d 621, 624 (Iowa Ct. App. 1983) (explaining that the “level of proof required by ‘clear, satisfactory and convincing evidence’” is the same as is required by “‘clear and convincing evidence’”). The plaintiff’s evidence must establish the terms of “at least a bare bones contract.” Lindsley v. Anderson, 383 N.W.2d 530, 532 (Iowa 1986) (cleaned up). “A contract requires a meeting of the minds,” so we look for the parties’ “mutual intent.” Peak v. Adams, 799 N.W.2d 535, 544 (Iowa 2011). And even when there is evidence of some other agreement between the parties, that is not enough without “clear, satisfactory, and convincing evidence” that the parties “agreed to convey an interest in the real estate itself.” Peterson, 355 N.W.2d at 29, 31 (“While there might be grounds for some sort of contract action, the evidence falls short of establishing an interest in the land itself.”).3 Because Robbins’s claim for specific performance was tried to the court in equity, we review the district court’s decision de novo. See id. at 29; see also Iowa R. App. P. 6.907. “De novo review means we review the entire record and decide anew the issues properly preserved for appellate review.” 3 Although Robbins seeks to prove the existence of a contract “for the creation or transfer of any interest in lands,” Iowa Code § 622.32(3), rather than arguing that the statute of frauds applies, Wilson chose to focus on the “more basic” question of whether “any agreement for transfer of land, within or without the reach of the statute of frauds, was established by the evidence.” Peterson, 355 N.W.2d at 28. The district court also decided only this argued issue without addressing the statute of frauds. We do the same, assuming without deciding that any evidence supporting the oral agreement was admissible. See id. (taking the same approach). 7 Hora v. Hora, 5 N.W.3d 635, 645 (Iowa 2024) (cleaned up). While we are not bound by the court’s factual findings, we do not “decide the case in a vacuum or approach it as though the trial court had never been involved.” Id. (cleaned up). Rather, we give those findings “weight and defer especially where the credibility of witnesses is a factor in the outcome.” Id. (cleaned up); see also Iowa R. App. P. 6.904(3)(g). We do so “because the district court has a front- row seat to the live testimony, viewing the demeanor of both the witness as she testifies and the parties while they listen, whereas our review is limited to reading black words on a white page of a sterile transcript.” Hora, 5 N.W.3d at 645. On our de novo review, we agree with the district court that Robbins failed to meet his heavy burden to prove the existence of an oral contract to buy the land from Wilson by clear, satisfactory, and convincing evidence. To be sure, Robbins had some evidence on his side. He testified that he and Wilson agreed that he would buy “four acres” of land for “$40,000 to be paid off in four years” and that in the meantime Robbins could put his “driveway and culvert in.” He was able to describe the boundaries of the four-acre parcel and marked it on a map that was admitted into evidence. And he says that he started making the agreed installment payments the next week with a $1,000 cashier’s check, eventually delivering cashier’s checks totaling $39,000 to Wilson. He also submitted exhibits showing that he paid Wilson with nine $1,000 cashier’s checks—all of which Wilson eventually deposited—from July 2019 to August 2020 and with two $15,000 cashier’s checks—which were not deposited—sometime after December 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, respectively. Indeed, the memo notations on each of the checks backs up Robbins’s contention that he understood the checks to be installment payments for the land. 8 But countering Robbins’s evidence was Wilson’s testimony that he never agreed to sell the land and that he acted in line with that intent. Wilson testified that after the farmhouse fire, Robbins “asked if he could keep his stuff out there” on a field in the southern corner of Wilson’s land and “said that he would pay to keep it out there for awhile.” Wilson explained that he “didn’t think a lot about it” when Robbins started dropping off the $1,000 cashier’s checks “because he didn’t come with the first of every month.” According to Wilson, in the summer of 2020, Robbins “said he would like to purchase some property [and] wanted the $9,000 to go towards the purchase,” and Wilson responded that he was “not selling property,” that was not what they had talked about, and that if Robbins intended that, he could “have [his] rent money back” and would “need to remove [his] stuff from my property.” Wilson confronted Robbins again about three weeks later when Wilson’s neighbor was also present, reminding him, “We just talked about this, that the property is not for sale, and you need to quit cutting my trees and get your stuff off my property.” And then when Robbins dropped off the two $15,000 cashier’s checks with Wilson’s family a few weeks apart a year later in the summer of 2021, Wilson confronted Robbins once more and tried to return both cashier’s checks and give him another check for the $9,000, saying “here is all your money back, get your stuff off my property.” Wilson’s testimony was also corroborated by his neighbor’s testimony. The neighbor—who has no direct stake in this dispute but did once have his own argument with Robbins about the location of his property line—testified that one summer day in 2020 when he was chatting with Wilson, they “heard chain saws” and went down to the part of Wilson’s land where Robbins was storing belongings and saw Robbins cutting down trees. According to the neighbor, Wilson asked what Robbins was doing and Robbins answered, “Well, I’m cutting trees to make a driveway.” Wilson then told Robbins 9 “Well, you can’t be cutting trees” and “You know, I’m not selling this.” And Robbins agreed, saying “Yeah, I know,” and something like, “Just in case you do, I was looking for a spot to put a driveway,” before leaving the land. And the testimony of Wilson’s wife backed up his claim—though we give this testimony less weight given her relationship with Wilson and her interest in this case as a codefendant and co-owner of the land. She testified that she had no communication with Robbins about selling the land—or really anything. She agreed that she and Wilson “make big financial decisions together” and that they “[a]bsolutely” would have discussed selling the land if they were going to do so. But aside from Wilson telling her that Robbins “had asked to buy and [Wilson] told him we weren’t interested in selling any of our property,” they had no other discussions about selling the land. The district court’s evaluation of the credibility of this conflicting testimony is precisely the sort of factual decision-making to which we defer. See Hora, 5 N.W.3d at 645. And the court expressly found that Wilson’s “testimony denying the contract was more credible than [Robbins’s] testimony.” The court explained that Robbins “was uncertain with many dates and details” while Wilson “appeared more certain”; that Wilson’s “testimony had some corroboration” from other witnesses; and that Wilson’s consistent conduct and the lack of evidence suggesting some “reason for him to renege on any purported agreement” all weighed in favor of this finding. We give weight to this thoughtful credibility assessment and see many of the same things relied on by the court in our review of the record. At bottom, as the district court succinctly reasoned: [Robbins] has not presented sufficient evidence to show the existence of an oral agreement to purchase property from [Wilson]. [Robbins] may have wanted to buy the property and he may have even had an honest belief that [Wilson] was willing to sell him a parcel. But, the record does not support 10 his contention that the parties actually entered into an oral purchase agreement. Because Robbins failed to show the existence of the oral contract by clear, satisfactory, and convincing evidence, we affirm the district court’s denial of Robbins’s breach-of-contract claim seeking specific performance of the alleged oral contract.4 III. Unjust Enrichment Robbins alternatively argues that if the district court correctly denied his breach-of-contract claim, then it erred in rejecting his unjust-enrichment claim seeking a return of the $9,000 he paid to Wilson in 2019 and 2020. Cf. Cambron v. Moyer, 519 N.W.2d 381, 385 (Iowa 1994) (noting, when reversing and remanding a breach-of-contract case for other reasons, that if the court or jury found the alleged contract unenforceable, “it should then go on to consider whether [the plaintiff was] entitled to restitution for the [amount] paid to defendant” allegedly under the contract). “The doctrine of unjust enrichment serves as a basis for restitution.” State ex rel. Palmer v. Unisys Corp., 637 N.W.2d 142, 154 (Iowa 2001). It is an equitable claim, “based on the principle that a party should not be permitted to be unjustly enriched at the expense of another or receive property or benefits without paying just compensation.” Id. To recover, a plaintiff must prove three elements: “(1) enrichment of the defendant; (2) at the expense of the plaintiff; (3) under circumstances that make it unjust for the defendant to retain the benefit.” Behm v. City of Cedar Rapids, 922 N.W.2d 524, 577 4 As we resolve this claim based on Robbins’s failure to prove that the parties mutually agreed to an oral contract for the sale of the land, we do not address the parties’ other arguments about whether the alleged terms were definite enough to establish an oral contract or whether specific performance is an appropriate remedy. 11 (Iowa 2019). We again review the district court’s decision de novo. See Iowa Waste Sys., Inc. v. Buchanan Cnty., 617 N.W.2d 23, 30 (Iowa Ct. App. 2000). The district court denied Robbins’s claim based only on the third element, so that is where we focus.5 This final element cuts to the heart of the equitable nature of the claim. We ask “whether the circumstances surrounding” the money or benefits received “ring of inequity or injustice if return payment for the value of those services was not ordered.” Iowa Waste Sys., 617 N.W.2d at 30. Or in other words, does the money received “in equity and good conscience belong[] to plaintiff”? Palmer, 637 N.W.2d at 155 n.3 (cleaned up). At bottom, we must thus decide whether, under the totality of the circumstances, it is unjust for Wilson to retain the $9,000 that Robbins paid him in 2019 and 2020 after the fire destroyed the farmhouse. Robbins argues that it is unjust because he made the payments as partial installments on the purchase of the land—not as rent for storing his belongings on the land as the district court found—and that even if they were rent payments, they were “highly inflated” and “disproportionate to the rent that” he had been paying for the farmhouse. But on our de novo review, we agree with the district court that the totality of circumstances does not show inequity or injustice if Wilson retains the $9,000 paid by Robbins. For starters, it is undisputed that Wilson provided Robbins value by permitting him to store his belongings on the land for over a year. And while 5 Aside from denying the unjust-enrichment claim in his answer, Wilson has made no argument against any element of the claim in the district court or on appeal. But this does not prevent us from affirming the district court’s decision denying Robbins’s claim. See King v. State, 818 N.W.2d 1, 11–12 (Iowa 2012). Indeed, as the appellee, Wilson did not even have to file an appellate brief at all. See id. at 12; Iowa R. App. P. 6.903(3). It is the appellant who “seeks to overturn the judgment” and thus must generally present a claim of error to us before we can consider it as a basis for reversal. King, 818 N.W.2d at 11–12. 12 the parties contest the purpose of the nine $1,000 payments, we see no reason not to defer to the district court’s findings that the storage was “as part of the rent agreement,” that Wilson “considered the payments as a continuation of the rental agreement,” and that at least some of the $9,000 is properly considered rental payments for that storage. We take Robbins’s point that such an amount for merely leaving his belongings on the land for sixteen months—especially when compared to the similar $500 per month rent for the farmhouse—is steep. So if those were all the circumstances, the equities of Wilson retaining the entire sum might be a closer call. But like the district court, we also find it relevant that Robbins repeatedly cut down many of Wilson’s trees—even if, as the district court found possible, he did so in the honest belief that he would soon own the land. Wilson obtained an estimate of more than $28,000 to replace the lost trees. And even discounting that figure as likely overvalued given the lack of specific evidence about precisely how many and what kind of trees were cut, just the labor for cleaning up the cut branches Robbins left on the land was nearly $3,000. So factoring in this cleanup expense and even a fraction of the estimated value for the lost trees, along with some compensation for the storage, we cannot say that Wilson’s retention of the $9,000 would “ring of inequity or injustice.” Iowa Waste Sys., 617 N.W.2d at 30. What’s more, before this suit was filed—and nearly three years before the eventual trial and ruling—Wilson wrote a check for $9,000 that he tried to give to Robbins along with the other two uncashed cashier’s checks, telling him “here is all your money back, get your stuff off my property.” But Robbins refused to accept the checks and said he would sue unless Wilson sold him the land. “Such a situation does not conjure notions of justice” that would require the court to step in and order the return of the $9,000 now. Id. 13 at 31 (similarly factoring in defendant’s repeated offers to avoid the enrichment that were rejected by the plaintiff before suit). We thus affirm the district court’s denial of this unjust-enrichment claim. AFFIRMED. 14