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Northshort Capital Enterprises v. St. Tammany Hospital District #26/21/2002
Disposition: AFFIRMED.
Plaintiffs-appellants, Edwin J. Cantin, Jr. and Ed Stevens d/b/a Northshore Capital Enterprises, appeal a judgment sustaining a peremptory exception of no right of action filed by defendant St. Tammany Hospital District #2 d/b/a Slidell Memorial Hospital (SMH). We affirm.
PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On December 2, 1994, Northshore Capital Enterprises L.P. (Northshore) brought this suit against SMH. Thereafter, SMH filed exceptions of no right of action, lack of procedural capacity, and vagueness. The trial court granted SMH's exceptions and permitted Northshore to file supplemental pleadings.
On April 27, 1995, the petition was amended to substitute plaintiffs as proper parties. The amended petition alleged that on August 29, 1991, Northshore, represented by its president, Cantin, entered into a contract of purchase and sale with SMH. Under the terms of the contract, which was attached to the initial petition, Northshore agreed to assign to SMH any right it obtained to purchase immovable property located at 1111 Gause Boulevard in Slidell, Louisiana. In exchange for assignment of the right to purchase, SMH agreed to reimburse Northshore for all costs incurred in acquiring the property and to pay an additional fee in the amount of $8,874.
In furtherance of the contract with SMH, on September 11, 1991, Northshore signed a contract with South Savings and Loan Association and the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) agreeing to purchase the Gause Boulevard property. Thereafter, Northshore conveyed the right to purchase the property to SMH, and SMH purchased the property from RTC. SMH then refused to pay the amount agreed upon under the contract. In their petition, as amended and supplemented, plaintiffs sought damages for breach of contract, wrongful conversion of movable property, loss of earnings, interruption of past and future business dealings, and infliction of mental pain and anguish.
SMH answered the lawsuit and also filed an exception of no right of and/or cause of action, maintaining that the contractual obligation was "against public policy, prohibited by law and absolutely null" because Cantin was a compensated contractual employee of SMH at the time the contract was executed. SMH claimed the $8,874 fee was prohibited under the Code of Governmental Ethics.
Plaintiffs responded by filing a motion for summary judgment, agreeing, for purposes of their motion, that Cantin was a public employee at the time the contract was executed. Plaintiffs asserted that the entire contract should be declared absolutely null and the parties should be returned to the position they occupied prior to entering the contract.
Following a hearing, the trial court denied plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and sustained SMH's exception of no cause of action, dismissing plaintiffs' suit. On appeal, in an unpublished opinion rendered on December 28, 1998, this court declined to exercise supervisory jurisdiction over the denial of plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, noting that resulting irreparable injury had not been urged. Concluding that plaintiffs' petition stated a cause of action for breach of contract, this court reversed the trial court's dismissal of the lawsuit, and remanded the matter for further proceedings. We note that although the reasons for judgment issued by the trial court indicated that plaintiffs did not have a right of action, that ruling was not included within the plain language of the judgment and, therefore, not reviewed in the earlier opinion of this court.
In response to plaintiffs' third amending and supplemental petition, SMH filed along with its answer allegat
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