Litigation: “A deal is a deal,” says the fifth circuit

Not long ago, while suffering through Contracts in my first year of law school, I questioned my attorney‐father about what it takes to create a final, enforceable contract in a business setting. Dear old dad then regaled me with the epic story of the Pennzoil‐Texaco litigation from his younger days, when the former obtained a $10 billion judgment against the latter after a Texas jury found Texaco guilty of stealing away Getty Oil from Pennzoil after Pennzoil had taken substantial and definitive steps to put into writing an agreement to merge. In so many words, the drama of Pennzoil v. Texaco (as further dramatized in Texaco's gargantuan Chapter 11 bankruptcy) exemplified that “a deal is a deal,” especially when it has been fully or substantially executed in a written, signed agreement.