Court Opinion

ID: 9483665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:28:08.746849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:46.047951
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
When Phillips Petroleum Company decided to expand their refinery operations, they *224were forced to relocate many homeowners who lived on leased land surrounding their refinery. Phillips developed a residential subdivision called the Golf Course Addition, and sold plots of land in that subdivision to the people who were displaced by their refinery expansion. Linda Guest was one of the homeowners who was forced to move. Along with many other homeowners, Guest purchased land in the Phillips subdivision and moved her house there. After living in the subdivision for only a short time, a large hole appeared beneath one of the homes in the neighborhood causing damage to the home. Residents of the Golf Course Addition soon discovered that their entire neighborhood was located on top of an abandoned well site. Guest subsequently discovered that her house was positioned directly on top of one of the abandoned, unplugged wells. Guest sued Phillips pursuant to the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) for the damages she sustained as a result of the placement of her home on an abandoned well. Tex.Bus. & Com.Code Ann. §§ 17.41 et seq. (Vernon 1987). Guest claimed actual damages of $83,000, which comprised the total cost of removing her house from Phillips’ abandoned unplugged well site and establishing it at another location.
On appeal the court holds that Guest is not entitled to the $83,000, because such a recovery would constitute economic waste. Therefore, the court affirms the award to Guest of $44,250 for the fair market value of the house. I respectfully dissent from this part of the court’s opinion.
The court suggests that economic waste will result if Guest is awarded damages equal to the cost of relocating the house because the cost of relocation exceeds the current fair market value of the house. The court then cites a number of cases for the proposition that Texas courts may not award damages for the cost of repair if the cost of repair results in economic waste. March v. Thiery, 729 S.W.2d 889, 895 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1987, no writ); Miller v. Dickenson, 677 S.W.2d 253, 258 (Tex.App.—Fort Worth 1984, writ ref’d n.r.e.); Jim Walter Homes, Inc. v. Mora, 622 S.W.2d 878, 883 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1981, no writ); Greene v. Bearden Enter., 598 S.W.2d 649, 653 (Tex.App.—Fort Worth 1980, writ ref’d n.r.e.). The court then concludes, based on these eases, that the cost of moving and reestablishing the Guest house will result in economic waste.
This court’s argument with regard to economic waste is highly suspect for the following reason: the case at hand does not involve a defect in the construction of the house, as do the cases cited by the court; rather, the case at hand involves a fundamental defect in the land upon which the house is built. The jury found that Guest’s house, built on this defective land, was uninhabitable. Trial Record, p. 1944. Allowing this house to remain in its current uninhabitable and unusable condition is economic waste in the worst sense. Guest’s house, otherwise habitable but for its location, if not moved, may have to be abandoned — what could possibly be greater economic waste than that? The cases cited by the court simply do not hold that economic waste will result if a house that is built on property that is fundamentally flawed is relocated to another location to make the house habitable. In addition, forcing Guest to either sell the house for a substantial loss, abandon the house, or move the house at her own expense will result in substantial financial loss to Guest, a result I believe to be grossly inequitable. Besides, would any reasonable purchaser buy a house whose collapse is imminent? That the record indicates that Phillips did not have success selling other homes in the Golf Course Addition after the discovery that the development had been built on an abandoned well site only confirms my feeling that the court’s damage award was unjust.
The jury found that $83,000 was the reasonable and necessary cost of reestablishing Guest’s house on another lot, and that amount is the proper measure of recovery.8 *225Any lesser amount would do a great injustice and would violate the purpose of the DTPA. The second issue raised on appeal is whether the district court erred in compounding the interest annually instead of daily. On this issue I concur with the court.
I dissent.

. Jury question number 12, element A, addressed the "reasonable and necessary cost of moving Linda Guest’s home and reestablishing it to its current condition and landscaping on another lot or lots. Such cost includes the cost *225of buying another comparable lot or lots.” The jury answered $83,000. Appellant’s Brief at 6.