Baker Marine Corp. v. Moseley

645 S.W.2d 486, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 5187
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 9, 1982
Docket1982cv
StatusPublished
Cited by42 cases

This text of 645 S.W.2d 486 (Baker Marine Corp. v. Moseley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Baker Marine Corp. v. Moseley, 645 S.W.2d 486, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 5187 (Tex. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinions

OPINION

UTTER, Justice.

This is an appeal from a suit on an employment agreement instituted by Frank Moseley against Baker Marine Corporation. Trial to a jury resulted in a verdict in favor of the appellee, Frank Moseley, and the trial court entered judgment accordingly. From that judgment, the appellant, Baker Marine Corporation, has duly prosecuted this appeal. We affirm.

In 1975, Moseley began a company called Corpus Christi Fabricators. A large percentage of the work of this company was done for Baker Marine. Following the completion of the Baker Marine contract, Corpus Christi Fabricators had no more work to do and as a consequence was in financial difficulty. The business was sold to Baker Marine and renamed Baker Manufacturing. The sale of the business included an agreement that Moseley would be employed by Baker Marine to run and supervise Baker Manufacturing in the building of jacks (gear boxes) to be used in the construction of offshore rigs. Baker Marine circulated a memorandum with respect to Moseley’s compensation. The pertinent portion of the memorandum is as follows:

“To: S.M. Vaughan
From: Bill Geer
Date: July 27, 1978
Subject: Frank Moseley-Employment Compensation
At the time of the purchase of the assets of Corpus Christi Fabricators, Larry A. Baker, Sr. made the following deal with Frank for his compensation. It was agreed that he would get a guaranteed salary which would be an advance against any compensation that was to become due him. Frank would receive an amount equal to one-half of the difference between $150,000.00 and the total cost of performing all machine work to be done in connection with manufacture of the jacks (gear boxes). In determining such total cost, the general concept would be just as if the operation was owned by Frank; that is, included in cost would be all direct labor, indirect labor, and cost of working capital. Finally, an additional cost would be added in a reasonable amount for services performed by BMC employees in connection with Baker Manufacturing Company’s operations.
⅜ ⅜ ⅝ ⅝ ⅜ ⅝
The time Frank would be paid his one-half of the difference between the actual cost of the job and $150,000.00 would be at the completion of the job when all costs could be finally determined. However, we discussed that if during the progress of the job, he required advances we would be reasonable in making such advances.
All of the above, with the exception of the computation of work for miscellaneous, was to be done for the first two contracts only, with a commitment from BMC that after the first two contracts another arrangement would be made with Frank that was equally satisfactory, perhaps involving working on a percentage basis. Frank has indicated that the present arrangement is satisfactory and [488]*488would like to continue on this basis. My recommendation is also that this method of compensation computation be continued since it furnishes Frank an incentive to perform his work at the lowest possible cost.”

The two contracts referred to were for jacks (gear boxes) for jobs labeled 04 and Mil. While employed by Baker Marine, Moseley completed work on jobs 04, 05, 06, 08, 09, Mil and M14. Moseley testified that he completed jobs 07 and M15 to 65% of completion. This was the only agreement testified to by either appellant or appellee. Moseley testified that he thought that he would be working under the initial arrangement unless some other suitable agreement was reached. Moseley was paid approximately $117,000.00 for his work on jobs 04 and Mil and also for his work on 05 in accordance with the compensation arrangement. He was not paid anything on any of the other jobs he worked on other than his salary. At trial, Moseley introduced testimony showing that he was not owed anything on 05 or Mil, that he was due $10,000.00 on 04 and that he was owed the following amounts on the jobs he had not been paid on: 06 — $30,598.00; 08-$25,-554.00; 09-$23,032.50; M14-$20,300.00; 07 and M15-$49,749.96.

Moseley’s claim was submitted to the jury in the following manner and the jury answered as follows:

“SPECIAL ISSUE NO. 1
Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that Defendant, BAKER MARINE CORPORATION, employed Plaintiff, FRANK MOSELEY, to do machining and miscellaneous work which included work on any one or more of the following jobs?
Job Yes No
04 X
06 X
07 X
08 X
09 X
M14 X
M15 X
SPECIAL ISSUE NO. 2
If any or all of your answers in question No. 1 were “yes”, answer the following question as to the rigs involved.
What sum of money, if any, if paid now in cash, do you find from a preponderance of the evidence is owed by Defendant, BAKER MARINE CORPORATION, and unpaid to Plaintiff, FRANK MOSELEY, under terms of employment with regard to any of the following jobs.

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645 S.W.2d 486, 1982 Tex. App. LEXIS 5187, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/baker-marine-corp-v-moseley-texapp-1982.