Helping Hands Home Care, Inc. v. Home Health of Tarrant County, Inc.
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-08-01657-CV (January 29, 2013)
Justices Moseley (opinion), Myers, and Richter
Dallas Court of Appeals, No. 05-08-01657-CV (January 29, 2013)
Justices Moseley (opinion), Myers, and Richter
On appeal of a judgment rendered on a jury verdict’s findings in favor of the plaintiff in a case alleging breach of covenants not to compete, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional interference with contracts, the court affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court upheld the jury’s liability findings with respect to the defendants’ solicitation of customers and causation, but reversed the judgment with respect to any damages attributable to lost profits incurred after the plaintiff sold its business. The court also upheld the trial court’s refusal to award the plaintiff its attorneys’ fees because the plaintiff did not satisfy the presentment requirement of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code.
On appeal, the defendants/appellants first challenged the legal and factual sufficiency of the jury’s findings on liability, arguing there was no evidence of impermissible solicitation, and no evidence that any such solicitation caused the patients at issue to take their business to Helping Hands. The appellants contended that the patients at issue transferred to Helping Hands without being solicited to do so, in most cases because Helping Hands had hired their nurses. The appellants did not challenge the enforceability of Grice’s and Delzell’s covenants not to compete.
The court of appeals recounted at length the evidence introduced at trial. The court gave particular significance to testimony by a Specialties nurse that one of the defendants (who did not appeal) said she was going to use a confidential list of Specialties patients to start calling them and asking them to move to Helping Hands, and to testimony by another Specialties nurse that the same defendant said she was in fact contacting all Specialties patients. The court of appeals noted that the appellants did not challenge the jury’s finding that the defendants conspired with each other, and this evidence therefore showed improper solicitation attributable to all defendants. The court of appeals also pointed to testimony that patients are likely to follow their nurses, and to evidence that the defendants indirectly solicited patients by soliciting their nurses, as sufficient evidence of causation. The court therefore affirmed the judgment with respect to liability.
The defendants/appellants next challenged the amount of damages. In particular, the appellants noted that Specialties sold the relevant segment of its business before trial, and argued that Specialties could not recover lost profits attributable to the time after that. Specialties responded that it had appropriately reserved its claims in the sale. But the court of appeals addressed the issue as one of causation and said the scope of Specialties’ reservation of claims was irrelevant to that inquiry. The court of appeals agreed with the appellants that their conduct could not have caused Specialties to lose post-sale profits because, as a result of the sale, Specialties would not have received those profits anyway. The award of post-sale lost profits—over half the total amount—was therefore reversed.
Specialties cross-appealed the trial court’s refusal to award it attorneys’ fees related to its claim for breach of contract. The court of appeals focused on the presentment requirement of Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 38.002 and held that Specialties had failed to plead and prove presentment. The court agreed with a 1985 Waco Court of Appeals opinion that filing suit does not satisfy the presentment requirement. The court also rejected Specialties’ argument that the exchange of settlement offers at mediation satisfied the presentment requirement in this case. The court of appeals therefore upheld the trial court’s refusal to award attorneys’ fees to Specialties.
