HOUSTON – A Harris County trial court's summary judgment in the fraudulent inducement and breach of a settlement agreement case of a Richmond physician and his wife against a former would-be employee has been affirmed by a state appeals court.
The Texas 1st District Court of Appeals handed down its ruling in the appeal filed by physician Pankaj K. Shah, his wife, Bharati, their company Indus Associates, and the Indus-owned company Apex Katy Physicians. The Shahs had appealed the summary judgment handed down earlier by the 61st District Court in Harris County that dismissed allegations of fraudulent inducement and breach of a settlement agreement filed against Abeer Saqer "and numerous other parties," according to the appeals court's ruling.
"We hold that the Shahs failed to present more than a scintilla of evidence that Saqer's alleged fraudulent misrepresentation caused them any injury and that the trial court therefore properly granted summary judgment on the Shahs' fraudulent-inducement claim," the appeals court said in its 15-page opinion handed down March 13.
Justice Harvey Brown wrote the opinion in which Justice Evelyn Keyes and Justice Russell Lloyd concurred.
The case is rooted in a purchase and lease agreement the Shahs reached to operate a northwest Houston hospital in which Saqer was its interim chief executive officer. The hospital never opened and eventually filed for bankruptcy, according to the opinion.
"Before that case was tried, the Shahs entered into a settlement agreement with Saqer and her company, I Care International LLC," the opinion said. "At the time of the settlement, Saqer was also a potential witness in a separate lawsuit, in which a group of physicians who had invested in the failed hospital brought claims against Dr. Shah."
The Shahs filed their lawsuit several years later, claiming in part that Saqer had breached a settlement agreement provision to "not voluntarily testify against the Shahs" when she testified during a deposition and at trial, according to the opinion. The 61st District Court granted Saqer's hybrid motion for summary judgment, in which she argued in part that the Shahs had not made their case, according to the opinion.
The trial court granted the motion "without specifying any ground," the opinion said. The Shahs appealed.
In their appeal, the Shahs "did not directly respond" to Saqer's claim "that there was no evidence that they were injured by her allegedly fraudulent misrepresentations," the opinion said. The Shahs did address that Dr. Shah would not have signed the settlement agreement had he known about information Saqer's "actual financial condition," according to the opinion.
"But like their allegations concerning the damages caused by Saqer's breach of the settlement agreement, the Shahs' allegation here was not supported by citation to any evidence," the opinion said. "The Shahs did not produce an affidavit, deposition testimony, or any other competent summary-judgment evidence that they were injured by Saqer’s representation that she was insolvent. And as we noted above, allegations contained in summary-judgment pleadings are not evidence."