Opinion ID: 2831299
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: “Rescind” doesn’t mean “rescission”?

Text: Finally, the Court confirms its unwillingness to allow the language of the statute to control the outcome of this case when it concludes that “notice and restitution or a tender of restitution,” which are prerequisites to the common law remedy of rescission, “are not prerequisites to the cancellation-and-rescission remedy under Subchapter D, as long as the affirmative relief to the buyer can be reduced by (or made subject to) the buyer’s reciprocal obligation of restitution.” Ante at ___. In other words, having decided that the Legislature’s use of the word “rescind” justifies ignoring the statute’s refund-of-all-payments provision, the Court then concludes that, actually, the Legislature doesn’t really mean “rescind” or “rescission” at all. Instead, it means “restitution,” or what the Court calls “the common law element of mutual restitution.” Id. at ___. Surely, if that’s what the Legislature meant, it could have said so. In my view, the Court has at this point gone from interpreting a law to making a law, because it believes restitution is a proper remedy, but rescission (with its inconvenient notice and tender prerequisites) is not. In doing so, the Court has demonstrated why its conclusion is wrong to begin with.