Tahoe Corp. v. P & G GATHERING SYSTEMS

506 So. 2d 1336
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 6, 1987
Docket18686-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 506 So. 2d 1336 (Tahoe Corp. v. P & G GATHERING SYSTEMS) 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
Tahoe Corp. v. P & G GATHERING SYSTEMS, 506 So. 2d 1336 (La. Ct. App. 1987).

Opinion

506 So.2d 1336 (1987)

TAHOE CORPORATION, a Utah Corporation & William H. Deal, Trustee for Tahoe Corporation, Appellants,
v.
P & G GATHERING SYSTEMS, INC., Gas Transportation Corporation, William B. Brown & William H. Krutzer, Appellees.

No. 18686-CA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

May 6, 1987.

*1338 Shotwell, Brown & Sperry by George Wear, Jr., Monroe, and McKeithen, Wear, Ryland & Woodard by George M. Wear, Columbia, for appellants.

Brown, Wicker & Amman by Ralph J. Wicker, Monroe, for appellees.

Before HALL, SEXTON and NORRIS, JJ.

NORRIS, Judge.

This is a suit for quantum meruit or breach of the obligation to perform in good faith. The plaintiff, Tahoe Corp., claims that it continued to sell natural gas to defendant, P & G, even though P & G refused to negotiate a better price for Tahoe. To prove damages, Tahoe introduced evidence of numerous other transactions between the defendants and other sellers, as well as evidence of a federal maximum price. It argued that the relationship between the corporate defendants encouraged them to depress the price they paid to Tahoe, thereby enriching themselves at Tahoe's expense. The trial court found that the original contracts were valid and that Tahoe and P & G terminated their contract in 1981. The court also found that the parties entered an oral agreement from which Tahoe had the option of receding at will. Under this new agreement, P & G offered to continue receiving Tahoe's gas in 1981, but only at the same price as they were then paying. Since Tahoe chose to continue dealing with defendants and they paid pursuant to the oral offer, the court dismissed the suit. Tahoe now appeals, assigning as error:

(1) the finding that Tahoe had other options for marketing its gas;
(2) the finding that the parties entered a new agreement in 1981; and
(3) the failure to award Tahoe a fair and equitable price based on quantum meruit.

Unable to see manifest error in any of these findings, we affirm the trial court's judgment.

FACTS

The facts begin in the mid-1970s, a period of rapid mineral exploration both in *1339 general and in Ouachita Parish. George Sanders came to Louisiana and negotiated with the Grant family, which owned a large tract of land off Sterlington Rd. in Monroe. As a result of these negotiations, the Grants executed a lease in June 1976, naming as lessee Sanders's corporation, Diablo Oil. Shortly after this, Sanders organized another corporation, defendant P & G Gathering Systems Inc. P & G set up the pipelines that would carry off the gas from the lands in the Grant lease. Monroe businessmen William D. Brown and William H. Krutzer, interested in buying P & G's gas, guaranteed Sanders's loan to erect the pipeline system.

Meanwhile the plaintiff, Tahoe Corp., came on the scene. It acquired a number of subleases from Diablo whereby Tahoe would drill and complete wells on the leased property. Tahoe drilled and completed 25 wells under these subleases.

Tahoe then entered a contract to sell the gas it extracted under the subleases. By contract dated September 28, 1976, Tahoe agreed to sell its gas to P & G for a price of $1.00 per m.c.f. Tahoe would also receive one-half of anything over $1.25 that P & G received from re-sale of the gas. The contract specified a term equal to that of the duration of Tahoe's subleases. We note that at this opening stage of Tahoe's involvement, Tahoe was surrounded by Sanders: acquiring its mineral rights by a sublease from Diablo, carrying its gas through pipes owned by P & G, and selling its gas to P & G, but Tahoe was not fenced in to the extent it later was.

P & G simultaneously entered a contract to resell the Tahoe gas. The purchaser was Gas Transportation Corp. ("GTC"), owned by Brown and Krutzer, who had backed P & G's construction finances. Under this contract, GTC was to pay P & G $1.25 per m.c.f. P & G was also to receive a 5¢ per m.c.f. escalation on the first anniversary date in 1977, and on every successive anniversary date. The term was set at five years; thus the contract would expire on October 1, 1981. Tahoe has not claimed, and the evidence does not show, that these contracts were anything but arms-length transactions.

It is obvious from the interplay of the two contracts that whatever price P & G could fetch for Tahoe's gas would enure to Tahoe's benefit if it exceeded $1.25. Following the terms of the P & G/GTC contract, P & G would receive in the final year $1.45 per m.c.f. and Tahoe would receive $1.10. There is no provision regulating a bargain between P & G and GTC after the five years expired, although Tahoe would surely benefit from any higher price obtained thereafter.

Less than a year after these contracts went into effect, Sanders decided to move to Texas and to sell his interests in Ouachita Parish. He sold all his P & G stock to GTC, thus making P & G a wholly-owned subsidiary of GTC. He also assigned all of Diablo's rights in the Grant lease to GTC. Thus at this point GTC owned all the entities that surrounded Tahoe, although the initial sale and re-sale of Tahoe gas were governed by contracts entered into in September 1976. There is no evidence of plan or design on the part of GTC to acquire P & G or any of Sanders's holdings for the purpose of suppressing Tahoe's price.

On the first anniversary, GTC escalated its price by 5¢ according to contract; P & G in turn paid an extra 2½¢ to Tahoe. The subsequent escalations were also honored so that in the final year Tahoe was indeed receiving $1.10 per m.c.f., as originally intended by P & G and GTC.

Meanwhile, the price of natural gas rose beyond all expectation. Price increases were so dramatic that Congress intervened, passing the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 ("NGPA"), authorizing maximum prices for natural gas. Pub.L. 95-621, 92 Stat. 3366; see esp. 15 U.S.C. § 3318. Tahoe was placed in the hands of a Trustee, Mr. William Deal, by action of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Deal was obviously not content to see Tahoe getting barely over a dollar for gas when the NGPA and market prices were over twice that.

In an effort to get a better price for Tahoe's gas, Deal came to Monroe in 1979 *1340 or 1980 to call and meet with Krutzer. Deal came back about a year later, demanding renegotiation. He had received from GTC's general counsel a letter of July 2, 1981, asserting that P & G would not renegotiate its contract with Tahoe. Tahoe Ex. 10. Deal met with Krutzer and insisted that because Krutzer and Brown now owned both companies, P & G was no longer an independent entity and, especially after October 1981, any contract with GTC could be disregarded, with the result that the prices GTC got from its purchasers could be passed directly along to Tahoe. Krutzer maintained that P & G was indeed a distinct legal entity and that he would keep the contract in force. Deal next insisted that Tahoe's wells qualified for maximum prices under NGPA. Subsequent to the July 1981 letter, however, Krutzer and Brown had discussed the subject at length and decided that they could not offer a price increase to Tahoe. They had bought P & G in large measure because of its ability to get cheap gas; a decision to pay more would upset the profitability of the scheme.

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Bluebook (online)
506 So. 2d 1336, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tahoe-corp-v-p-g-gathering-systems-lactapp-1987.