Opinion ID: 2831299
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Cruz Controls?

Text: 7 Third, the Court relies—incorrectly, I believe—on Cruz v. Andrews Restoration, Inc., 364 S.W.3d 817, 826 (Tex. 2012). In Cruz, we interpreted a provision of the DTPA in which the Legislature provided that a court may “restore to any party to the suit money or property, real or personal, which may have been acquired in violation of this subchapter.” TEX . BUS. & COM . CODE § 17.50(b) (emphases added). Reasoning that (1) the words “restore” and “restitution” share “the same root,” (2) “[r]escission is merely the ‘common, shorthand name’ for the composite remedy of rescission and restitution,” and (3) “rescission is not a one-way street” but instead “requires a mutual restoration and accounting,” the Court concluded in Cruz that the Legislature intended that an order “restoring” property to a DTPA consumer must also deduct from that award the value of any benefits the consumer received. 364 S.W.3d at 825–26. I do not agree that Cruz controls our decision in this case. The statute in Cruz authorized “restoration,” and not just to the consumer, but “to any party to the suit.” TEX . BUS. & COM . CODE § 17.50(b)(3). By contrast, the statutes here dictate that the “purchaser . . . receive a full refund of all payments made to the seller.” TEX . PROP . CODE §§ 5.069(d)(2), 5.070(b)(2), 5.072(e)(2). And, more importantly, the statute in Cruz authorized restoration only of amounts “acquired in violation” of the statute. TEX . BUS. & COM . CODE § 17.50(b)(3). By contrast, the statute here requires a “full refund of all payments made to the seller.” TEX . PROP . CODE §§ 5.069(d)(2), 5.070(b)(2), 5.072(e)(2). In short, the Court’s construction of the DTPA provision in Cruz may have been consistent with the language of that statute, but that same construction is not consistent with the entirely 8 dissimilar language of the statute at issue here. Because the Legislature’s language matters, our construction of very different statutory language in Cruz is of no help here. 9