Court Opinion

ID: 9648534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:25:37.830807+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:02.603303
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Calvert
joined by Justice Brewster, concurring.
I agree to the judgment affirming the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals, but I do not concur in the reasons given in the opinion by Associate Justice Culver for that result.
The contract provided, in substance, that in consideration of petitioner’s employment and his later disassociation therefrom, he would “not thereafter practice his profession in Lubbock County.” The contract, as written, was either legal or illegal. The language of the contract is too clear to lend itself to a construction that the parties intended the prohibition to exist for *367only three years, or five years, or some other period of time which this court deems to be a reasonable time. When the parties contracted that respondent would “not thereafter” practice in Lubbock County they clearly meant that he would never practice in Lubbock County. What this court is saying by Justice Culver’s opinion is that when a party agrees by contract that he will “not thereafter” engage in a particular business we will test the legality of the contract by looking further to see if he said “and by the language ‘not thereafter’ I mean ‘never.’ ” Of course the two expressions mean exactly the same thing.
In my opinion the Court of Civil Appeals decided this case correctly and upon the correct theory: that is, that under all the authorities on the subject this was a perfectly valid and enforceable contract, reasonable both as to time and space, prohibiting respondent from ever practicing his profession in Lubbock County, with the right in respondents to waive their right of enforcement beyond a three-year period.
What Justice Culver’s opinion does is to say that even though the contract may be illegal and unenforceable as written, one of the parties may make it legal and enforceable by offering to take out of it the offending provision that makes it illegal. This is exactly contrary to what we have held within less than two weeks of this writing in Patrizi v. McAninch, this volume p 389, where the parties sought by the very terms of the contract itself to eliminate all illegality leaving the remaining provisions as valid and enforceable.
I pose these questions: If we may rewrite the time provision of the contract, may we, having before us a contract illegal because of an unreasonable restriction as to space, rewrite it with the consent of the party seeking to enforce it so as to reduce the space, on the theory that the parties intended only to make a reasonable contract, and thereby make the contract legal? Could we rewrite both time and space provisions? In other words, if the contract here had provided that petitioner would “not thereafter” practice his profession in Texas, could we say that three years was a reasonable time limitation and Lubbock County a reasonable space limitation and then, with the consent of respondent, enforce the illegal contract as thus modified to a legal contract? I think not; and yet we have taken the first step in that direction, and I can think of no logical reason why, having done the one, we may not do the other.
Opinion delivered June 30, 1954.