Amoco Production Co. v. Texaco, Inc.

876 So. 2d 944, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1625, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 1495, 2004 WL 1367171
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 16, 2004
DocketNos. 03-1625, 03-1423
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 876 So. 2d 944 (Amoco Production Co. v. Texaco, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Amoco Production Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 876 So. 2d 944, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1625, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 1495, 2004 WL 1367171 (La. Ct. App. 2004).

Opinion

h COOKS, Judge.

This appeal involves a dispute over how interest on a judgment should be computed. Defendants, IMC Exploration Company and Mallinckrodt, Inc., argue the trial court erred in denying its motion seeking to reduce legal interest owed.

FACTS

Amoco filed a lawsuit against IMC Exploration Company and Mallinckrodt, Inc., contending they deliberately took action/inaction which led to the cancellation of leases that Amoco had previously assigned to them. After the cancellation of Amoco’s leases, the defendants acquired new leases directly from the landowners. A producing gas reservoir was later discovered under the cancelled leases, which Amoco argued cost them millions of dollars in lost production revenues.1

[946]*946Amoco’s petition, filed on April 29, 1994, asked for damages for defendants’ breach of the reassignment clause pertaining to the Baudoin Leases. The petition was amended in 2001 to add a claim for a breach of the reassignment clause of the Jenkins Lease. Amoco requested $26,732,000.00 in damages as a result of the loss of the Baudoin Leases and $8,376,000.00 in damages for the loss of the Jenkins Lease.

After a lengthy trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Amoco in a lump-sum verdict of $30 million. There was no indication in the judgment as to what portion was given for the respective breaches of the reassignment clauses of the Baudoin and Jenkins leases. A judgment was signed on September 19, 2001 ordering the defendants to pay Amoco $30 million with legal interest due from “the date of judgment demand until paid.” The Defendants appealed. This court affirmed the trial court judgment in its entirety. See Amoco Production Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 838 So.2d 821. Writ applications were filed with the Louisiana Supreme Court, which were subsequently denied. See Amoco Production Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 845 So.2d 1096. Therefore, the judgment became final.

Counsel for defendants were provided by Amoco with a written calculation of the value of the judgment, which included legal interest. Defendants filed a motion seeking to reduce the legal interest owed under the judgment and/or to stay the judgment. Defendants contended legal interest should have run on one portion of the jury award from the date of the amended petition rather than the date of judicial demand of the original filing. Specifically, defendants argued Amoco alleged two separate and distinct breach of contract claims, the first in its original petition and the second in an amendment to the petition filed years later. Thus, they contend there were two judicial demands and interest must be separately computed on the damages attributable to each claim. Amoco filed an opposition to the motion and also filed an exception of res judicata.

The trial court denied the defendants’ motions, holding since the jury made a lump-sum award it was impossible to determine how much the jury awarded for the loss of any particular lease. The trial court also determined that defendants should have raised this issue prior to the judgment becoming final, and granted the exception of res judicata.

Defendants filed an appeal from the district court’s judgment. Despite its appeal, defendants also filed a writ application with this court “in an abundance of caution and to ensure that this court can review the judgment on its merits either through its supervisory jurisdiction or its appellate jurisdiction.” We granted the writ application for the limited purpose of ordering the consolidation of the writ application with the appeal.

Defendants assert the trial court made the following errors in its judgment below:

1. The district court erred in denying IMC and Mallinckrodt’s motion regarding computation of interest on the judgment concluding that legal interest on the entire principal amount of the final judgment runs from April 29, 1994, from the date of the filing of suit, instead of computing interest on damages for each separate breach-of-contract claim from the date of its respective judicial demand.
2. The district court erred in failing to separately allocate the lump-sum award by determining what portion of the [947]*947award was attributable to the alleged 1981 breach concerning the Baudoin, et al. Leases asserted in the original petition in 1994 and what portion of the award was attributable to the alleged 1976 breach concerning the Jenkins Lease asserted in the amended petition filed in 2001. Alternatively, if the court could not perform the allocation, it erred in failing to hold that legal interest on the entire lump-sum award runs from the date of the amended judicial demand in 2001.
3. The district court erred in granting Amoco’s peremptory exception of res ju-dicata to bar IMC and Mallinckrodt’s motion.
4. The district court erred in failing to order Amoco to repay IMC any overpayment of interest on the Judgment.

ANALYSIS

Initially, we note the final judgment in this matter awarded Amoco “the full and true sum of THIRTY MILLION AND NO/100 (30,000,000) DOLLARS, with legal interest thereon from the date of judgment demand until paid.” The plain wording of La.Code Civ.P. art. 1951 provides that a final judgment cannot be substantively changed. Amoco argues this is what the defendants are trying to do. However, defendants contend they are merely seeking to have the judgment enforced as written. They argue the issue before this court is as follows:

Where two separate breach-of-contract claims are asserted at different times in a single suit by way of two separate judicial demands and the judgment awards interest “from date of judicial demand,” does interest on both claims run from the filing of suit asserting only one of the claims, as Amoco argues and as the trial court held, or does interest on each claim run separately from the date each was judicially demanded, as Appellants argue and as every case that has addressed this issue has held?

Defendants call our attention to the Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision in Abraham v. Abraham, 233 La. 808, 98 So.2d 197 (1957), wherein the court found that the filing of an amended petition asserted a new demand and that judicial interest on the cause of action of the amended petition would not begin to run until the date they were judicially demanded. In Abraham, the husband filed an original petition seeking a separation from bed and board. The petition was later amended to ask for an accounting and settlement of the community, for which he eventually received a money judgment. The question facing the Abraham court was whether the judicial interest on the money judgment should begin to run from judicial demand of the original petition or from the amended petition. The court discussed its reasoning as follows:

Plaintiff contended that judicial demand commenced when he filed his suit for separation from bed and board on February 13, 1953, and not from the date of his prayer for settlement of the community. For this reason, he would not acquiesce in marking the Docket of the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans ‘satisfied’. The present proceeding followed.
Plaintiff argues in this Court that all pleadings filed subsequent to February 13, 1953 were auxiliary pleadings to the main suit.

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876 So. 2d 944, 3 La.App. 3 Cir. 1625, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 1495, 2004 WL 1367171, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/amoco-production-co-v-texaco-inc-lactapp-2004.