Court Opinion

ID: 9630990
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:26:23.758455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:47.025818
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING OPINION ON EN BANC ORDER
JANE BLAND, Justice.
The trial court found that the net worth of EnviroPower, L.L.C. (“EnviroPower”), the debtor company, is a negative $12 million dollars, if calculated by subtracting liabilities from assets. EnviroPower is operating solely because its first hen secured creditor provides it with an operating allowance, and to date, appears to have forborne calling in the debt it holds. The trial court also found that EnviroPower’s “net worth for purposes of setting a super-sedeas bond” is a positive $8 million, based on a third party’s offer to purchase the company. It is the potential gain from this sale upon which the trial court required a $200,000 supersedeas bond. Determining the market value of particular assets, however, is one thing; the market value of a company as a whole is another. The former would place the value of an asset on the books at its current worth rather than at its book value (or cost basis), in instances in which accounting principles allow for it. The latter is a hoped-for gain (or an unhoped-for loss) should the company be sold, or a capitalization above or below the company’s book value, based upon expectations about potential future earnings. See Ramco Oil & Gas, Ltd. v. Anglo Dutch (Tenge), L.L.C., 171 S.W.3d 905, 914 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2005, no pet.). Such gains generally are not recognized under accounting principles unless or until they are realized. *8The market value finding in this case is based on the latter concept. • .
As our sister court observed in Rameo, for purposes of statutory interpretation, courts traditionally define net worth to mean assets less liabilities under basic accounting principles. See id. at 913-14 (collecting cases interpreting statutes that contain net worth as a term defined as assets less liabilities under generally accepted accounting principles); see also Tex.R.App. P. 24.2(c)(1) (“A judgment debt- or who provides a bond, deposit, or security under (a)(1)(a) in an amount based on the debtor’s net worth must simultaneously file an affidavit that states the debtor’s net worth and states complete, detailed information concerning the debtor’s assets and liabilities from which net worth can be ascertained.”). Such an interpretation could leave room for differences of opinion as to the current market value of particular assets, but not the more ethereal (at least when trying to borrow against it to post a bond) unrealized gain that potentially could be had if the judgment debtor company was sold in the future, and the unrealized gain distributed among its assets to increase their value beyond their capitalized cost basis, without any notion that a market exists for those assets separate from a sale of the company that has yet to occur.
Of course, should a gain from the sale of the company be realized, an appropriate bond must be posted. And, since a potential gain in this case is more than speculative, the trial court is within its authority to require that the company escrow an amount sufficient to post a bond upon the completion of the sale, if the completed sale results in the company moving from the red to the black in terms of assets minus liabilities. See Tex.R.App. P. 24.1(e) (“The trial court may make any order necessary to adequately protect the judgment creditor against loss or damage that the appeal might cause.”). But “market value” based upon the unrealized gain from a proposed sale of the company does not equal current net worth for the purposes of setting a supersedeas bond under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code and Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 24. See Ramco Oil & Gas, Ltd., 171 S.W.3d at 914 (“By using market capitalization as the standard for determining Rameo Energy’s net worth, the trial court applied an incorrect legal standard and erred as a matter of law.”).
The dissent correctly observes that this case and our court’s decision in LMC v. Burke are not wholly incompatible because no party in the LMC case asserted that the trial court should set a supersedeas bond based on an overall market value that was unreflected by the company’s book value. LMC Complete Automotive v. Burke, 229 S.W.3d 469, 485-86 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2007, pet. denied). The dissenting view in this case cannot be squared, however, with our sister court’s well-reasoned decision in Rameo, in which the court noted the distinction between valuing a company based on its net worth and valuing one based on its market capitalization, or market value, and held that net worth, for purposes of setting a bond, is assets less liabilities. See Ramco Oil & Gas, Ltd., 171 S.W.3d at 913-14. Because disputes about the determination of net worth arise with regularity in the jurisdictions encompassed by our two courts, the litigants and trial courts are entitled to some uniformity in our decisions on the setting of appeal bonds. I therefore join the en banc opinion and order.