23-0384·Petition For Review
- Courts may not blue-pencil words into a contract: the trial court erred by adding "scheduled" and "physical" to Section 9.1 of a firm gas-balancing agreement, whose plain language excused the pipeline from providing balancing services whenever the upstream pipeline required the pipeline or the shipper to limit imbalances attributable to the shipper.
- The Court rendered judgment for the pipeline on the shipper's repudiation and fraud, fraudulent-inducement and negligent-misrepresentation claims, remanded the breach-of-contract claims for a new trial, and cautioned that lost profits from an untested forward-sales strategy dependent on volatile gas prices are speculative.
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23-0868·Other
- Although specific performance and damages are alternative remedies, a trial court may award an equitable monetary sum alongside specific performance of a real-estate contract to place the parties where they would have been had the contract been performed on time, limited to expenses directly traceable to the delay, foreseeable at contracting, commercially reasonable, and, where the seller holds the land, incurred in the care and custody of the property.
- The court of appeals erred by deleting the entire $308,136.14 monetary award because the trial court called it "actual damages/consequential damages" without separating recoverable property-related delay expenses from unrecoverable ones such as business-operating loan interest and taxes on other properties, so the Court remanded for that review.
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24-0425·Petition For Review
- A fracking company did not breach its water-supply contract by buying water from other suppliers, because its oil wells sit outside the scope of the contract's exclusivity clause making Lindale the exclusive water provider and pumper "on the Pipeline."
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and rendered judgment for Equinor.
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24-0825·Petition For Review
- What is the scope of a directed verdict on liability in a breach-of-contract case when the trial court does not say which of two termination-fee provisions was breached: only the ground stated in the motion under Rule 268, or the whole record?
- Does the timing of the client's termination, which decides whether a $40,000-capped fee or a percentage-of-savings fee applies, go to liability or only to the amount of damages?
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24-0953·Petition For Review
- Does a claim under a railcar lease clause requiring the lessee to "reimburse promptly" for corrosion damage accrue when the corrosion occurs, or only when the lessee fails or refuses to reimburse the lessor's resulting losses?
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25-0131·Petition For Review
- A lawyer conclusively established accord and satisfaction when a dissatisfied client crossed out the release language on her fee-refund check, deposited it, and never signed the release: he accepted payment with knowledge of the condition.
- The Court reversed and rendered judgment for the lawyer in a per curiam opinion without argument.
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25-0274·Petition For Review
- Does an LLC's buy-sell provision let a member condition a buyout offer on return of the other member's unreturned capital contribution, or does Section 12.2 allow only the purchase and sale of "Membership Interest"?
- Can a party recover Chapter 38 attorney's fees when the only relief obtained on a breach-of-contract claim is a specific-performance injunction rather than damages?
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25-0297·Petition For Review
- A supplier cannot recover in quantum meruit for goods that express agreements between the parties covered, even when the jury found the customer did not breach those agreements.
- With the quantum meruit recovery barred, the supplier had not prevailed on a claim that supports attorney's fees, so the trial court erred in awarding $219,674 in fees over the jury's $0 finding.
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25-0350·Petition For Review
- Attorney's fees incurred in prior litigation are recoverable as breach-of-contract damages when the breach was not a basis for that prior litigation; the American Rule does not bar them.
- The Court rendered judgment awarding $216,112 in partition-proceeding fees, because the partition suit was brought before the settlement agreement was breached.
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25-0579·Petition For Review
- Are lost profits recoverable past the notice period under a terminable-at-will contract?
- Did the jury charge use a legally incorrect definition of the corporate practice of medicine, does electing recovery on one breach-of-contract claim preclude Chapter 38 fees on the other, and did the court of appeals improperly render judgment for tortious interference rather than remand?
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25-0637·Petition For Review
- Whether a shipper that prepaid $32.7 million for firm pipeline transportation and terminal loading under related "ship-or-pay" agreements can recover its prepayment when the carrier never provided a terminal capable of loading a million-barrel vessel or transported one of the contract grades of crude, or whether the agreements' vessel limits and nomination requirements defeat the claim.
- Whether related contracts must be construed together and in harmony, so that an exhibit's loading specifications cannot negate the terminal-service obligations in the Terminal Agreement, and whether the futility doctrine excuses the shipper from nominating a vessel or grade the carrier had not made available.
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25-1045·Petition For Review
- Under Government Code section 2253.078(a), does a public work contract terminate, and the one-year limitations period on a performance-bond claim begin, when the owner terminates the contractor's right to proceed and demands performance from the surety?
- Or does the contract, which the court of appeals held includes the bond, survive until the surety's own conduct under the bond ends, so that a suit filed 14 months after the county's termination notice is timely?
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