LPCH attorney, David Coale, comments on the JPMorgan Chase Bank NA v. Orca Assets GP LLC case in the article, "5 Texas Supreme Court Cases to Watch." The case disputes the sale of oil and gas rights to two different parties and raises the "direct contradiction rule" which says that written contractual language can be held to negate an earlier representation if the subsequent statement directly contradicts it.

David Coale comments, "The rule is harder to apply in practice than it is in theory, and many sophisticated parties don't know how specific a subsequent disclaimer of reliance must be to overcome claimed reliance on an earlier representation" and "the court's ruling could affect thousands of people who signed forms with disclaimers of reliance."

“It's bread-and-butter, important commercial law stuff,” Coale said. “This has the potential to tinker with a very basic issue of business law.”

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