Court Opinion

ID: 9669025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:37:20.791866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:51.499364
License: Public Domain

JOHN CAYCE, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority holds that by negotiating a contract for the purchase of property a municipality waives sovereign immunity from suit for breach of the contract. The Supreme Court of Texas, however, has repeatedly rejected such judicially created waiver-by-conduct exceptions to the sovereign immunity doctrine in the contract-claims context. Because the majority’s holding departs from the established jurisprudence of our state, I respectfully dissent.
*801The Supreme Court of Texas has held that a governmental entity by entering into a contract waives immunity from liability for breach of the contract but does not, merely by entering into a contract, waive immunity from suit.1 The supreme court has also rejected the view that immunity from suit is waived merely by accepting the benefits of a contract.2 The majority’s holding that the City has waived its immunity from suit by negotiating a contract with the Singers for the purchase of their property is in direct conflict with these supreme court rulings and defeats many of the policies underlying the sovereign immunity doctrine.3
The majority’s reliance on Texas A & M University-Kingsville v. Lawson4 to create a waiver of immunity based on the City’s contract with the Singers is misplaced. In Lawson, the University entered into a settlement agreement with Lawson to settle a lawsuit filed by Lawson in which he alleged claims for which the University had no immunity.5 Lawson later sued the University for breach of the settlement agreement. In response, the University filed a plea to the jurisdiction, contending that it was immune from the breach of contract suit because there is no waiver of sovereign immunity for breach of contract.6 The trial court denied the plea, and the court of appeals affirmed.7
In affirming the lower courts’ denial of the University’s plea to jurisdiction, the Supreme Court of Texas held,
We agree with the trial court that when a governmental entity is exposed to suit because of a waiver of immunity, it cannot nullify that waiver by settling the claim with an agreement on which it cannot be sued. The government cannot recover waived immunity by settling without defeating the purpose of the waiver in the first place.... We do not think the Legislature intended by waiving the bar of immunity for claims under the Whistleblower Act that settlements would be prevented or delayed by a revival of the bar in the form of immunity from suit for breach of settlement agreements. While it is certainly true ... that a suit for breach of a settlement agreement is separate and apart from the suit on the settled claim, enforcement of a settlement of a liability for which immunity is waived should not be barred by immunity.8
Lawson clearly has no application to the facts of this case. Unlike the University in Lawson, the City was not exposed to suit because of a waiver of immunity when it entered into its agreement with the Singers. At the time the agreement was made, the Singers had no cognizable claim under Texas law that could be brought against the City based on their negotiations with the City, and they had not filed or threatened to file a suit alleging a claim against the City for which the City’s immunity is waived.
*802The majority opines, however, that Lawson governs this case because the City exposed itself to suit by “its threat of eminent domain proceedings,” and that the parties’ agreement settled an eminent domain claim in which “the Singers would have a claim against the City for adequate compensation.”9 There are three obvious problems with this reasoning.
First, the City’s alleged “threat” of eminent domain proceedings did not expose the City to a suit for adequate compensation because the Singers could not have sued the City based on such a threat. Under the statutes and case law discussed in the majority opinion,10 the Singers would have had an actionable claim against the City for adequate compensation if, and only if, the City actually commenced eminent domain proceedings to take the property — which the City did not do in this case.
Second, there is no evidence that the parties intended that the agreement settle any alleged claims against the City or the Singers. In construing a contract, the primary concern of this court is to ascertain the true intention of the parties as expressed in the contract.11 The plain and unambiguous language of the agreement in this case evidences an intent that the Singers convey their property to the City in consideration for the City’s promise to make improvements to the Singers’ remaining property and reimburse the Singers for out-of-pocket expenses. There is nothing in the wording of the agreement that even remotely demonstrates an intent of either party to settle an alleged eminent domain or adequate compensation claim.
Third, the Singers had no adequate compensation claim to settle when they entered into the agreement because they had already reached an agreement with the City on the amount of compensation to be paid for the property. Before initiating an eminent domain proceeding, a municipality must first attempt to purchase the property by agreement.12 When the municipality purchases the property by agreement, there is no condemnation or “taking” of the property by the power of eminent domain.13 In such a case, the person from whom the property was purchased has no justiciable claim for adequate compensation under the condemnation statutes or the takings clause.14
In the final analysis, the majority acknowledges that its purpose in construing the agreement in this case as a “settlement *803agreement” to bring it under Lawson is to prevent the City from accepting the benefits of the agreement while enjoying the protection of immunity.15 As desirable as this outcome may seem, however, it is not supported by the law or the facts. The City was not exposed to suit because of a waiver of immunity when it entered the agreement, and no actionable claim for which the City could be sued because of a waiver of immunity was settled by the agreement. Thus, there is no basis for the majority’s conclusion that the agreement was an attempt by the City to “create immunity” from a claim to which the City was exposed because of a waiver of immunity.
Moreover, by characterizing the agreement as settling an eminent domain claim, the majority has ignored the distinction between a municipality’s power to purchase property by contract and to take property by eminent domain.16 The evidence conclusively shows that the City was acting within a color of right under contract when it negotiated the agreement with the Singers to purchase their property and not under its eminent domain powers. The Singers were not forced to negotiate with the City. They could have refused to negotiate, insisted that the City take the property, if at all, by eminent domain, and asserted a claim for adequate compensation. Having agreed to convey their property to the City voluntarily, however, the Singers should not be allowed to now assert that the City has taken or attempted to take their property against their will by eminent domain.17
For all of these reasons, I would sustain the City’s sole issue, reverse the trial court’s denial of the City’s plea to the jurisdiction, and render judgment dismissing the Singers’ suit against the City.

. Gen. Servs. Comm’n v. Little-Tex Insulation Co., 39 S.W.3d 591, 594 (Tex.2001).

. Tex. Natural Res. Conservation Comm’n v. IT-Davy, 74 S.W.3d 849, 854-58 (Tex.2002); Little-Tex., 39 S.W.3d at 594.

. IT-Davy, 74 S.W.3d at 857 ("Creating a waiver-by-conduct exception [to the sovereign immunity doctrine] would force the State to expend its resources to litigate the waiver-by-conduct issue before enjoying sovereign immunity’s protections — and this would defeat many of the doctrine’s underlying policies.”).

. 87 S.W.3d 518 (Tex.2002).

. Id. at 518.

. Id. at 518-19.

. Id.

. Id. at 521.

. Maj. Op. at 799-800 (emphasis supplied). The sovereign immunity doctrine does not shield a municipality from an action for compensation when a taking is attempted by eminent domain. Steele v. City of Houston, 603 S.W.2d 786, 791 (Tex.1980).

. See Maj. Op. at 796-99, 800 and authorities discussed therein.

. E.g., DeWitt County Elec. Co-op. v. Parks, 1 S.W.3d 96, 100-01 (Tex.1999); Cokerv. Coker, 650 S.W.2d 391, 393 (Tex.1983); Boland v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of Am., 816 S.W.2d 843, 845 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1991, no writ).

. Tex. Prop.Code Ann. § 21.012(a) (Vernon 2003) (providing that “a condemning entity may begin a condemnation proceeding” if the entity “is unable to agree with the owner” on a purchase price).

. See Little-Tex, 39 S.W.3d at 598-99; State v. Steck Co., 236 S.W.2d 866, 869 (Tex.Civ. App.-Austin 1951, writ ref'd).

. This does not mean that the Singers waived their right to recover adequate compensation for the property in the event the City instituted eminent domain proceedings. Had the Singers refused to voluntarily convey the property to the City and the City attempted to take the property by eminent domain, nothing in the Singers’ agreement with the City would have precluded them from pursuing a claim for adequate compensation in a subsequent condemnation proceeding.

.Maj. Op. at 800 ("Were we to hold that the City’s actions shielded it from immunity from suit (thereby ignoring the supreme court’s holding and logic in A & M), the City would be able to avoid paying compensation for property altogether by entering into agreements with properly owners without ever intending to pay the promised compensation and yet still be shielded from suit.”). But see IT-Davy, 74 S.W.3d at 857 ("Because we have consistently held that only the Legislature can waive sovereign immunity from suit, allowing other governmental entities to waive immunity by conduct that includes accepting benefits under a contract would be fundamentally inconsistent with our established jurisprudence.”).

. Littie-Tex, 39 S.W.3d at 599; see, e.g., Tex. Transp.Code Ann. §314.011 (Vernon 1999) ("The governing body of a municipality may purchase or condemn property to lay out, construct, improve, or extend any highway within its boundaries.”); Osborne v. Keith, 142 Tex. 262, 177 S.W.2d 198, 201 (1944) (noting that governmental entities may obtain land and construction materials by private contract or condemnation proceedings); Benefit Realty Corp. v. City of Carrollton, 141 S.W.3d 346, 349 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2004, pet. denied) (noting that the defendant obtained the property by agreement, rather than condemnation).

. See Steck, 236 S.W.2d at 869.