Court Opinion

ID: 9770249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:55:36.705216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:15.977835
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Chief Justice,
joined by
HECHT, CORNYN and ENOCH, concurs with the judgment of the Court.
Although I concur in the judgment of the Court remanding this cause to the trial court, I disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the Buy-Sell Agreement, taken as a whole, imposes a duty on X-Pert to hand over the proceeds of the life insurance policy to her. X-Pert offers substantial countervailing arguments as to why the Agreement entitles it to retain the proceeds. Rather than adopting either position as a matter of law, I would return this issue to the finder of fact for resolution.
By providing that an insured shareholder has “the right to retain all contracts of insurance,” rather than simply “retains” all contracts of insurance, Paragraph 10 of the Agreement invites the reading adopted by the court of appeals: that it confers only an option that must be exercised in some man*19ner. Moreover, in using the verb “retains,” the paragraph indicates that it is simply preserving ownership rights arising from another source. Yet we know from Paragraph 3 that an insured shareholder did not have an absolute ownership right in the insurance proceeds that could be enjoyed without action by his surviving spouse. Rather, the surviving spouse merely had the option, after the insured’s death, to exchange a 25% interest in the company for the insurance proceeds.
Moreover, Paragraph 10 speaks only to a right to retain the insurance contract. It says nothing about entitlement to the proceeds payable upon death of the insured. The failure of the parties to expressly address payment of the insurance proceeds in Paragraph 10, as they did in Paragraphs 3 and 6, creates, at least in my mind, an ambiguity.
Whether a contract is ambiguous is a question of law. Coker v. Coker, 650 S.W.2d 391, 394 (Tex.1983); R & P Enterprises v. LaGuarta, Gomel & Kirk, Inc., 596 S.W.2d 517, 518 (Tex.1980). For the foregoing reasons, I conclude that Paragraph 10 of the Buy-Sell Agreement is “reasonably susceptible to more than one meaning” on the question of who is entitled to the insurance proceeds under these circumstances, and therefore is ambiguous. See Coker, 650 S.W.2d at 393. Although Mrs. Little does not specifically argue that Paragraph 10 is ambiguous, instead contending that her interpretation is correct as a matter of law, the proper remedy is to return this issue to the trial court for a resolution of the ambiguity by the trier of fact. See id. at 392.
The trial court and court of appeals held that one party’s arguments were conclusive, while this Court holds the opposite. I disagree with all these judgments, believing that this dispute may properly be resolved only by the finder of fact.