Over at the Prawsblog, Eric Johnson asked his readers for their opinions regarding the most screwed victim in (civil) case-law. His results are in. I voted with the majority on this one and said the Peevyhouses (Peevyhouse v. Garland Coal & Mining Co., 1962 OK 267 (Okla. 1962)).
Eric's summary:
This is one of my most memorable cases from law school. We covered it early in the first year and no matter how I wracked my brain, I could not understand such a seemingly unjust result. Each party knew what they had agreed to and I thought that the Court let Garland off the hook. What was Prof. Boshkoff trying to teach us? That expectation damages were hard to expect? That restitution was in the eye of the beholder?In case you slept through expectation damages in Contracts, in Peevyhouse v. Garland Coal & Mining Co., the Peevyhouses signed a contract allowing Garland Coal & Mining Co. to strip-mine their farm, but with the express guarantee that Garland would restore the farm's landscape once they were done. Having taken what coal they could, Garland then refused to pony up the $25,000
required to remediate the land. The Oklahoma Supreme Court acknowledged the breach, but held that the remedy was limited to the diminution in the value of the farm. How much was that? According to Oklahoma's highest court, $300.
An offhand comment in class that the Court deciding for the coal company might not have been on the up and up made the most impact on me. I don't know if it is true (Wikipedia says we need a citation for the scandal) and I am not sure it matters. As a young aspiring, slightly paranoid and government-fearing, law student, learning of the fallibility of our legal system was counter-intuitively encouraging. I had always expected that "The Man" was out to get me, or you, or someone and Peevyhouse confirmed that.
But I had to hope that there were good people who could stick up for the little guy and bring a little justice to the injured. It didn't work out so well for the Peevyhouses, but their lesson stuck with me. Now I won't represent the Garlands of the world and I still think about the lesson I learned from Peevyhouse often in my practice, and it has nothing to do with specific performance of contracts.
