Placid Oil Company v. J. A. Humphrey, G. E. Hall, A. Pollard Simons and William D. McBee

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment by the court without a jury in a suit for damages based on an anticipatory breach of a contract to pay $25,000 as a contribution under a “Dry Hole Contribution Letter Agreement.”

The principal questions are: (1) whether the doctrine of anticipatory breach is applicable in Texas to a contract to pay a fixed sum upon the completion and abandonment of a dry hole if there was no initial mutuality of obligation between the parties; (2) whether there was in fact an anticipatory breach by the promisor; and, if the first two questions are…