Court Opinion

ID: 9648531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:25:28.844651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:02.556378
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Wilson
concurring.
The majority opinion is based in part upon Ford Motor Co. v. State, 142 Texas 5, 175 S.W. 2d 230. Art. 7437, V.|A.C.S., is not ambiguous and needs no construction. Our duty is to apply the statute.
The holding here is that a contract containing some clauses violating the antitrust laws and also containing a “saving clause” that the parties do not intend to violate the antitrust laws is not “absolutely void” and therefore “not enforcible, either in law or equity,” but on the contrary the portions violating the antitrust laws may be stricken and the remainder of the contract enforced if severable. In my opinion, this holding is contrary to Art. 7437, V.A.C.S., which is:
“Any contract or agreement in violation of any provision of this subdivision shall be absolutely void and not enforcible either in law or equity.”
*398Through Art. 7437 the Legislature clearly attempted to impose as a civil sanction for the purpose of aiding in the enforcement of the antitrust laws the penalty of contractual illegality or contractual unenforceability. The parties may sidestep neatly Art. 7437 in making a contract violating the antitrust laws by the statement that it is the “intention of neither party to violate * * * the Texas Antitrust Statute.” Of course his self-serving statement about intent is not a correct statement of fact. The parties knew the specific wording of the contract and intended to use the very words they did use. If a particular combination of words constitutes an antitrust violation, they intended to violate the antitrust law. In law a person intends to do the very act he does do although he may not fully understand or desire the specific legal consequences which follow his acts. So in the case of W. T. Raleigh Co. v. Land, 115 Texas 319, 279 S.W. 812, the court said:
“* * * The proviso, of course, is without meaning except as a self-serving declaration of intent whose prima facie evidential value, if any, is * * * wholly destroyed (or rather turned against the parties) if in fact a bad purpose appears in the execution of the agreement. * * *”
I would give no effect at all to the statement that the parties had no intent to violate the law if what they did does in fact violate the law.
The Ford case was not a suit to declare the contract void and unenforceable under Art. 7437 and no one attempted to invoke civil sanctions voiding the Ford contract. Perhaps that is the reason the Court in that case did not either mention or discuss Art. 7437.
It may be that consistency prohibits that the same contract should be held subject to civil penalties but not to criminal penalties. Since the Court in the Ford case did not directly construe or apply Art. 7437, as we must in the case at bar, we should disregard paragraph 12 of the contract because it directly conflicts with a statute and reserve a reconsideration of the Ford case until the point is again squarely presented in a penalty suit.
Opinion delivered June 16, 1954.