The High Price of an Unenforceable Agreement to Agree

The law firm of Andrews Kurth was recently hit with a nearly $200million dollar judgment for malpractice.  Yes, that’s right – nearly 200 MILLION dollars.  At the bottom of this – an agreement which was deemed unenforceable as an “agreement to agree.”  As reported by Law 360 (which requires registration – apologies), the malpractice suit stemmed from representation in a dispute involving a family business, Martin Resource Management.  Two brothers, Scott and Ruben Martin, were fighting over  management issues until their mother stepped in to broker a deal.  Andrews Kurth represented Scott Martin and sought changes to the deal to ensure its enforceability.  Scott ended up suing Ruben to force him to comply with the terms of the settlement; however, the appeals court ruled that the settlement agreement revised by Andrews Kurth was unenforceable as an “agreement to agree.”  Many lawsuits ensued resulting in this incredibly large jury award.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a copy of the actual agreement that was at issue – I would really like to see what the language looked like…